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Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam

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Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam

#91

Post by TeMPOraL »

Yesterday, after many years, my curiosity finally got better of me - I started playing World of Warcraft. Since my head is now full of thoughts about MMO, excuse me for saying this:

There should be a new class - or race - added to fantasy worlds. The Marketers. More evil than demons, undeader than the Lich King. Their gameplay mechanics would be based around earning gold by draining their own souls, as well as the souls of characters around them. Their primary combat role would be casting annoying debuff spells at everyone around, friend and foe alike.

Seriously though, this article basically says that someone out there has reached another level in insidiousness. If it was an MMO, we could at least form a raiding party and get rid of the problem once and for all.

Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam

#92

Post by mildbow »

erlehmann_ wrote: post #86
actsasbuffoon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California and New Jersey have laws that go above and beyond the protections outlined in CAN-SPAM. I used to work for a company that sent spam (I swear, I didn't know until after I'd already accepted the job), and we avoided sending to those states. If more states would adopt laws like this, we could dramatically curtail spam. As for what constitutes solicitation, I wish it was that simple. In some instances, compani…

> I used to work for a company that sent spam (I swear, I didn't know until after I'd already accepted the job) Did you look for a new job as soon as you knew?

tsk.

The overhead in getting another job is high modulo personal circumstance.

Why not use the helpful comment and try to be non-judgemental?

Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam

#93

Post by saltyhiker »

The real problem here is not the chain of marketing tech that allowed this, the issue is that the marketing message itself sucked. If the message was valuable, many people wouldn't have been bothered by receiving it.

As for the message itself, if their intent is to sell you that specific item you searched for, they should say so. Of course, they need to avoid the creepy-factor, which, along with laziness are the two reasons they may have ended up with the junky message you received.

Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam

#94

Post by JohnTHaller »

Nagyman wrote: post #82
JohnTHaller wrote: post #70

I've been getting more spam lately from "legitimate" companies. One of my email addresses leaked from a major open source project I corresponded with. Harvesters found it and now sell it to every small business and entrepreneur marketer you can think of. I get spam from CDNs, off-shoring companies, SEO/SEM, marketing, you name it. Lots of them use sketchy services like reply.io to make it seem like a real person sent…

This has absolutely picked up recently! It doesn't help their brand in my case, as I put them into the "Overly Aggressive Vendor" folder for future reference when I'm actually looking at purchasing services. Those reply.io emails that look like they're from a real person are a grey area of marketing. I think it's deceptive and places undue social pressure to reply. Sometimes I do reply, but only when I get annoyed. I…

When I started getting these, I called out the companies that did it. Kisi (getkisi.com) spammed me a few times and I called them out on it on Twitter with this tweet: "Hey @KISI - Spamming harvested emails is going to get your startup the wrong kind of attention." Their response was to block me. And continue to spam me. I can't imagine doing business with a company like that.

Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam

#95

Post by TeMPOraL »

Nadya wrote: post #29
Bartweiss wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even for Gmail users, the + notation will handle this well. foobar@gmail.com and foobar+SearsSoldMyEmail@gmail.com will both direct to the same location, and relatively few resellers have the sense to strip the extra data.

I do this but note that '+' will invalidate your email on some sites and can't be used to begin with. Yay for poor email validation! Gmail ignores `.` in email addresses so you could also try `y.o.u.r.e.m.a.i.l@gmail.com` which will validate in more places - but then you can't pinpoint where exactly unless you start keeping track in a complex spreadsheet. But you will know that somewhere you signed up for sold your e…

> unless you start keeping track in a complex spreadsheet

The spreadsheet doesn't have to be that complex. Just treat the spaces between letters as bits. Dot is 1, no dot is 0. Suddenly, an e-mail temporal@example.com has 128 different variants, and your spreadsheet may just be a numbered list of companies :).

Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam

#96

Post by rocqua »

__jal wrote: post #69

I think it is about time to build a one-click opt-out to preemptively opt-out of all of these scumbags' systems.

Opt outs require giving out emails though. If you think they are scummy enough, that might be a bad proposition.

That said, someone in the comments stated how these companies actively avoid those who might click 'report spam', so this might work.

Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam

#97

Post by TeMPOraL »

saltyhiker wrote: post #93

The real problem here is not the chain of marketing tech that allowed this, the issue is that the marketing message itself sucked. If the message was valuable, many people wouldn't have been bothered by receiving it. As for the message itself, if their intent is to sell you that specific item you searched for, they should say so. Of course, they need to avoid the creepy-factor, which, along with laziness are the two…

> The real problem here is not the chain of marketing tech that allowed this, the issue is that the marketing message itself sucked. If the message was valuable, many people wouldn't have been bothered by receiving it.

I disagree. This sounds like the rationalization marketing folks put forward, namely that they're actually helping people. No, they are not. At best, they're shoving messages into peoples' faces. At worst, they're shoving poisonous radioactive garbage messages full of lies into peoples's faces. The range of behaviour here is from mildly annoying to outright malicious. Very rare is the case when unsolicited marketing messages are something people are actually happy about.

Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam

#98

Post by not_a_codfish »

Just because you write a blog post doesn't mean I have to do it.

Spam is acceptable content, you've no right to tell anybody what they can or cannot create. If you don't like it, then don't look at it. If they shove it in your face, it's YOUR job to ignore it, not their job to somehow pre-determine who wants to see it and who doesn't.

As a content creator, I'm not obligated to do a background check on each user and try and see if my content is going to offend them, or bother them, or be considered irritating by them, it's just to C R E A T E.

Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam

#99

Post by downandout »

sp332 wrote: post #21
trjordan wrote: post #15

> This transaction breaks a core promise using the internet: just because I visit a website doesn’t mean I consent to getting spam from it. No it doesn't. There is no core privacy premise of the internet, and certainly not one that everybody used it signed up for. I'm not condoning this behavior, but we're in territory that we don't have prior art for. It used to be totally fine for one shopkeeper to mention to anoth…

This is really pushing the boundaries of the CAN-SPAM act. You're not allowed to send unsolicited emails. You shouldn't be allowed to pretend that visiting a site is a solicitation. Edit: I misunderstood the mechanism of collecting the addresses. This isn't skirting "unsolicited mail", but it is circumventing the ban on harvested email addresses.

First, CAN-SPAM doesn't outlaw the sending of unsolicited commercial messages - on the contrary, it lays out rules for sending them. Second, in this case, at some point this guy agreed to receive emails from Criteo when entering his email address somewhere. The fact that people don't read TOS before they agree to them does not invalidate them.

Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam

#100

Post by mootothemax »

r1ch wrote: post #5

I've had several companies ("data partners" they call themselves) approach us to add these scripts to our websites. All of the ones I've seen use MD5(email) for the "anonymous hashing". I mentioned our privacy policy doesn't allow us to give out user emails, and their marketing guys never seem to understand that MD5(email) is basically the same thing. I even made a video example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViCjzJ…

I'd like to know what happens if next time you end by asking for them to send you "a password you don't consider important."

If they're interested in the truth, that'll be a pretty convincing illustration.

(For any avoidance of doubt - this comes say after explaining what the score is)

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