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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

#141

Post by chime »

vxNsr wrote: post #84
chime wrote: post #42

I feel less paranoid now for my browsing process. Almost everything I search is in an incognito window, from shopping and research to programming and how-tos. And when I'm done with looking for a new dog leash or Python module, I close that window. Only things in my main browser are the regular sites I visit and am logged into (email, HN, reddit etc.) I started this after learning about the filter bubble but I've not…

Wouldn't it be easier to just use no script and ublock with whitelisting?

Already use ublock (even in incognito mode) and block 3rd party cookies. But personally dealing with no-script is too much hassle. I would much prefer my activity remain anonymous and disconnected between sites, not JS gives me trouble everywhere.

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

#142

Post by ziziyO »

davemel37 wrote: post #72
davb wrote: post #58

I once had something similar, if not worse, happen. I was researching some network equipment, looking at lots of websites and comparing products. Then my desk phone rings. A call being passed from the switchboard - someone asking for the person responsible for IT purchasing. It was a sales rep from a network equipment distributor, saying they noticed I was browsing their website and wanted to help me through the purc…

This is actually very common and much more sophisticated in the B2B world. Look into companies like http://id.kickfire.com/

This has happened with me. I do Pardot implementations from time to time, and one time I forgot to delete a test record with my info out of a production system we were about to launch. Time goes by, and I end up hitting their site to check out a bug they wanted me to fix. This flagged my contact in their system as "warm", and no less than 15 minutes later my phone rings.

I suppose this speaks more to my competency level than to theirs, whoops!

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

#143

Post by codedokode »

actsasbuffoon wrote: post #47
sp332 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

As a side effect disabling javascript also makes pages load faster, makes browser use less memory, hides advertisements and protects you from popups.

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

#145

Post by gorhill »

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…

> thankfully adblockers block Tealium tag manager by default anyway

Most ad blocker do not block Tealium by default. For blockers such as Adblock Plus or AdBlock, one must explicitly enable EasyPrivacy (which is enabled by default in uBlock Origin).

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

#146

Post by eridius »

fapjacks wrote: post #53
eridius wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this is it's easy to start getting legitimate marketing emails that you signed up for filed as spam, because they look similar to the marketing emails that you've been reporting. For example, for a while SpamAssassin decided that every email from the PlayStation store (even receipt emails) was spam, primarily because they look similar to other emails I've marked.

That's strange. Specifically I have marked all of Sony/Playstation's marketing crap "spam" in Gmail, and I marked only one of my PS Store email as "not spam" and never had a problem since.

Gmail is most likely a combination of global and local filters, and most people probably consider the PS Store emails as not spam. I'm not using Gmail, I'm using FastMail, so I'm using a local SpamAssassin filter (once you mark enough emails it flips from the global to the local filter). SpamAssassin uses some global data (e.g. URI blacklists and whatnot), but AFAIK the bayesian classification for my incoming email is purely based on my local training.

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

#147

Post by wpietri »

akg_67 wrote: post #66
davb wrote: post #58

I once had something similar, if not worse, happen. I was researching some network equipment, looking at lots of websites and comparing products. Then my desk phone rings. A call being passed from the switchboard - someone asking for the person responsible for IT purchasing. It was a sales rep from a network equipment distributor, saying they noticed I was browsing their website and wanted to help me through the purc…

In early 2000's, as B2B Product Manager, I implemented a similar customer outreach program. We will reverse lookup the name associated with visitor IP address and then look into our own sales contact database for contacts in that company. Depending on contact quality, we will reach out to them using phone, email or personal visit from a sales rep in the area. A few times, we decided to hold 'lunch-and-learn' type in-…

Wow. Any vendor doing this to me goes on a perma-ban list. If they don't respect me before the sale, I'd have no reason to think they'd respect me after.

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

#148

Post by userbinator »

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…

I've always pondered sending the following curt response to this type of not-quite-really-spammy (as in Viagra-ads) spam:

    Fuck off.
...or something even more offensive for greater catharsis, but then I worry it will just cause them to send even more, knowing that the address is "live".

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

#149

Post by sintaxi »

guelo wrote: post #74
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…

> It used to be totally fine for one shopkeeper to mention to another that he saw a customer looking for a particular item. Huh? Outside of some tiny village the shopkeeper would not know the name and address of customers that are just browsing. If a shopkeeper hired private investigators to stalk those customers, following them around everywhere gathering as much personal information as possible, it would probably r…

Not only that, in this example the shopkeeper is simply helping the customer find what they are most likely requesting simply to be helpful. A more accurate example would have shopkeepers buying customer data from each other using a 3rd party entirely for their own benefit. This really isn't the same thing at all.

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

#150

Post by [deleted] »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #104
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…

> It used to be totally fine for one shopkeeper to mention to another that he saw a customer looking for a particular item. When you do it at scale, the old rules don't apply. The on-line equivalent of that would be e-commerce sites sharing their detailed analytics data with each other. What was described in the article is more alike to a shopkeeper saying to another, "Did you see that woman in red scarf? Her name is…

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