Ethics in email marketing 3

[Aqif]

Hi All:

I just like to raise the issue reagarding ethical issues and privacy involved in email marketing. In many people view, email marketing is nothing but "SPAM".

I just like to mention that will it not be better idea to set some ethical guidelines to email marketing becasue if we will not do that then the email marketing industry will become a SPAM producing industry.

Any comments regarding addressing the ethical issues involved in email marketing and how people privacy can be protected?

Cheers!
Syed Aqif Mukhtar

 

[williambishop]

I do that myself masterracker, funny stuff.

As to ethics in spam, there are none, never were. Most spammers are sociopaths who have no morals or scruples. They are scum and should be treated as such.

 

[welshtroll]

In report it stated that around 80% of the emails on Hotamil accounts is spam, accounts can get on average 30-40 spam mails every day. But also stated was the fact that a large number of people use Hotmail as a disposable email to use while surfing.

Macintosh recently send out there newsletter, featuring an article on spam that contained the word Viagra, this resulted in 10% of the subscription were returned by filters.
Another case was the recent online game from BBC, that run paralle with their new program 'Spooks'. The number of emails being sent out caused, the email address to be added to a spam filter, and resulted in over 75% of the games players, not recieving emails for 2 weeks.

This problem has been around for a long time, in 1995, angry breast cancer patients got annoyed at AOL for putting the world breast on its blacklist.

Filters cannot be a long-term solution.
Where do we go from here? 'Does my thumb look big in this?'

elshtroll

 

[Tarwn]

I think only about 90% of spam is truly spam. In this day and time when I receive so much of it on a daily basis, i consider it all spam. But now that I think about it, some of that is really email I wouldn't mind getting, if it wasn't in the middle of all the mail I never wanted to get. Sure gevalia cafe wants me to check my online account and emails me once every few weeks, if it was emails like that than I wouldn't mind. In fact I won't even turn on my tek-tips mail just because I am so overburdened already that just checking my "junk mail" accounts becomes work. maybe someone should set up a nice big server or cluster and allow people to forward junk mail to it. Then the server could just keep sending out mail to the offenders until finally they got fed up with the "spam"
I know, it wouldn't work, but I can dream
-Tarwn ------------ My Little Dictionary ---------
Extreme Programming - (1)Trying to code before my second cup of coffee. (2) While(1){ Ctrl+C; Ctrl+V; }
Corrections - Comments made out of a desire to be helpful and repay the millions given to me

 

[woodsy41]

a potential new product for MS Marketing: spam repellant

woodsy41@coldbear.com

 

[GlenJohnson]

I have 4 accounts I check from my pc here at work. My personall one is where I get notified from tek-tips. Here's the ratio.
Business = 58% Spam, 2% Legit
Personall = 39% Legit
Two others = 1% Legit
Still trying to talk the boss into a spam filter on our I-Mail server. Glen A. Johnson
Microsoft Certified Professional
glen@nellsgiftbox.com


"The past, though it cannot be relived, can always be repaired."
John La Farge (1835-1910); U.S. artist.

 

[johnny99]

I have two point about some of the things written here , and I am one of the people that gets around 1.000 spam emails a day on my little one man domain.

The key difference in spam by email and normal mail is who covers the cost.
Costs on email is payed by the receiver.
Cost on normal mail is payed by the spammer.

A lot of people don't want to use their own email address in use groups, on ICQ, typed in on a web site and so on; so a lot of people use my email address and that isn't funny.

At this moment I have 987 aliases in my sendmail aliaese with email addresses that get spammed on my domain that is forwarded directly to spamcop.net. This is email addresses that have never been on my domain but still get spam email.
And the 987 email addresses is only part of the email addresses that I get spam email to that have never been on my domain, but I can't keep up with typing them all into the aliases file.

/johnny

 

[guestgulkan]

Would a change in the law may be useful here.
Say for example, you gave your email in good faith to company,
and that company then proceeded to sellyour email address to some third parties, then I believe that you should paid also.

Even if it is only say 10 pence ( or 10cents if you are USA)
per junk mail, this will soon add up to a substantial cost to the junk mailer - or to the companies that sold your email address.

Possible??

70% of my email is now junk(porn, baldness cures, cheap viagra, low rate mortgages, etc.)
[How did they find out I'm a middle aged dirty old man, with no friends - scary].

 

[johnny99]

Since I get more the 1.000 spam emails a day this could be great, but who should pay the money to me and later try to get them from the spammers.
If I have to track down the spammers to get them to pay me it will cost me a lot more to get the money then the money I get.

Around 98 % of emails send to me is spam.

But if I also count the spam that is rejected because of my filters I have more then 99,9 % spam.

/johnny