Are you a SPAMMER?

[JabezStone]

spam n.
Unsolicited e-mail, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups; junk e-mail.

There are genuine Internet Marketers, then there are the notorious Mail SPAMMERS, and the line between the two is very fine. What makes the difference in whether you are a real marketer or a SPAMster is whether your recipients chose to receive your correspondence or not. SPAMming means sending emails to people who have not authorized you to contact them. If they haven't opted in to your mail program, or specifically requested mail from companies like yours, you are a SPAMmer. Legitimate Internet email marketers will only send mail to individuals who have opted-in. Let's all say that together, class... "opted-in".

Most ISPs have a strict no-SPAM policy, and give zero tolerance to those who break the rules. SPAMming has many downfalls for everyone involved such as increased bandwidth, server load, time-waste, frustration, etc.

Recently, all Yahoo Stores were blocked by an anti-spam company because one rogue store owner decided a SPAM mail campaign might increase his business flow. The anti-SPAM group added the IP number to its list of abusers, and every Yahoo store owner was affected. The same thing happens with you. If your ISP's IP is added to an anti-SPAM group's list because of your SPAM-mail, the entire customer base of your ISP is potentially affected... this means immediate termination of service for you when they track you down in their mail-server logs! Ouch!

How can you avoid being a SPAM-meister? First of all, consider the source of the mailing list you are wanting to contact. If you don't know how the list was generated, chances are they haven't opted in to your program, and you will be considered a SPAMmer. If you have "harvested" the list from the net without the user's permission, you are a SPAMmer. If you have a program that randomly generates email addresses to mail to, you are a SPAMmer.
If the list you have was generated by people signing up from your site, then feel free to mail them. They have agreed to receive correspondence from you. Otherwise, slowly move your mouse away from the "send" button, and think of a more ethical approach to reaching potential customers.

-Jay

[borut]

Spamming is a plague of the internet!
And the sad news is, that we can do almost nothing against it! I allways keep several e-mail adress - one "secret" for trustworthy contacts, the other ones public. Those public never last long, because they get spammed quickly, which makes them unusable. Unfortunately, my "secret" address is no more "secret", so sooner or later I will be forced to change it too. And this is very very annoying...

[Vitalstatistix]

Like on hotmail you ask to not be sent junk mail and pr0n and stuff and you get it sent anyway.....

[BigFerg]

It's so frustrating that you can't do anything about it. At least with postal junk mail you can tear it up and put it in the prepaid envelope and send it back to them ( which I do)

[Vitalstatistix]

....or put it in your nextdoor neighbours post box (which I do)

EVIL ME!

[BigFerg]

*eyes Vitalstatistix suspiciously*

You don't live next door to me do you?

[jonna_dk]

Spamcop will trace the spammer and report it to their ISPhttp://spamcop.net

[mikecoutermarsh]

i use media temple.. and people using them have spammed, so sometimes when i send email to people running spam blockers they dont get it.

[Vitalstatistix]

Originally posted by BigFerg
*eyes Vitalstatistix suspiciously*

You don't live next door to me do you?

Depends where you live.

If you get 2 times the amount of junkmail than anyone in the street,....Theeeen it's posible, Yes.

Anyone for a doughnut?