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FIB - Scams 101 - Ye Olde Archives
Posted By: The Roadie <wcarton@flash.net> In Response To: Re: Does this not make "Capturing Email Addresses" worthless?? (Jim G)
Wednesday, 8 June 2005, at 7:24 p.m.
> By golly, ya might wanna run those words of wisdom past all the gurus who
> have stuff to sell showing us how to get rich with everything from ebay to
> ebook writing...to affiliate marketing, etc. Folks like Willie Crawford,
> Marcia Yudkin and Jim Straw.
I'm just relating the point of view of the Internet providers who rent their space to the gurus. If no abuse complaints roll in, the gurus will stay off the radar screen of their providers, and whether or not the marketers are confirming to today's "best practices" never becomes an issue.
But if one spam complaint comes in, the ethical provider, who wants to avoid being blacklisted, has to investigate. Anybody running an unconfirmed mailing list in the year 2005, or who repurposes an address, or starts sending ten emails a day instead of one a week, runs the risk of losing their hosting.
As Clint Eastwood said "Are you feeling lucky?"
If a guru has an enemy/competitor who can visit their web form, and sign up a dozen or so network administrators to a newsletter list against their will, the guru is in real danger of being fined, booted, or shut down for days while the investigation runs.
Finding some of these "dangerous" addresses is as simple as lurking in an anti-spam newsgroup and picking up some of the poster's addresses. It happens all the time, and the ethical marketer needs to be able to prove that the owner of the address wanted to have it on their newsletter list. Without proof, it's only a matter of time before an enemy/competitor manages to turn your newsletter into a harassment engine. It may take a long time to happen, but like betting against an earthquake happening next week - I prefer to buy insurance instead of just wishing and hoping.
> If you “opt in” for just one of their “offers”, free or otherwise, you can
> make book that you will begin receiving bunches of sales pitches from
> them. That’s how they earn their living, ya see.
ANd if the sheep-like followers of the guru sit still and take it, they rishly deserve the abuse of the email box they're getting. But if they silently take it and never complain, the abuser might get away with it forever. We'd never know.
> Their privacy thing-y tells us they won’t give, rent or sell our email
> addresses to others. But there’s nothing even implied indicating they
> don’t intend to keep sending us “notices” about all the neat and
> “profitable” stuff we can buy from them - or from someone with whom they
> have a joint venture deal.
And as soon as they get big enough to outsource their emailing, and some employee of that outsource contractor steals the list, then all bets are off. But that's not central to this discussion.
> I see nothing wrong with this...since folks like Willie and Marcia include
> a spot in each of their emails that permits you to OPT OUT. The experience
> I had with Mr Straw, however, proved he did NOT. Perhaps he does now.
CAN-SPAM requires an opt-out mechanism that works within ten days, and there's proposals to lower it to three. If a marketer whines that it can't possibly be done that quickly - ask them how long it takes to get ADDED to the newsletter list. If they say ten minutes, then you (and the FTC and their ISP) should be able to require them to honor opt-outs that quickly as well. :-)
I *hate* whiners who try to blow smoke up my skirt. (Not you, the lying marketers and list managers who make it out to be such a big deal to honor opt-outs)
> What it boils down to, really, is that many of the folks who made their
> “millions” in cyberspace did so in the beginning...when broadcast emails
> were not against the rules and the word “spam” referred simply to some
> rather unappetizing canned meat.
Spammers pretty much ruined a good thing by over-using it. Like over-grazing on the town common ruined it for the villagers who first let their sheep run free on common property. It's called the "Tragedy of the Commons" and some good reading can be found here:
http://dieoff.org/page95.htm
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