Re: Is it spam if it's targeted?

From: John Gaskill <gm_at_info-central-usa.com>
Date: Wed 01 Nov 2000 18:56:39 -0500

BRAD JENSEN <brad_at_elstore.com> WROTE:
> Right this minute I am running a program that goes out
> to a list of sites of a certain type and gets their
> 'mailto' addresses. Then I am going to do a mailing to
> those sites. It's a reasonable; way to contact people,
> and I will be emailing to about 3 to 6 thousand people
> out of the 100 million email addresses on the net. Any
> definition of that as spam is just hysterical (in
> several senses of the term.)

In no uncertain terms this behavior constitutes
spamming. There is no hysteria to it.

If spam = Unsolicited Commercial Email the harvesting
of addresses without the recipients' permission and
later delivery of messages to them constitutes SPAM in
the worst possible sense.

This is an even scurvier type of spamming than paying
for list of mail targets because the list operator may
lose list participants as a result of having "unique
list names" plucked and spammed.

Businesses who buy lists offered as "targeted" by bulk
emailers of questionable repute will certainly have a
rude shock if they are smart or daring enough to use
real REPLY TO: addresses in their email header.

Regards all,

John Gaskill
gm_at_info-central-usa.com





Received on Wed Nov 01 2000 - 17:56:39 CST