On Fri, 20 Sep 2002 08:42:18 -0400, Coles, Patrice M. wrote: to Subject: Are the spammer's web site service providers liable?
>As a person who was placed on a blocklist when I am *not* sending out spam, [....snippage....] We try to send e-mails to sales prospects and existing customers and can't get the info through. Perhaps it is useful when considering a definition of "spam", to contemplate the probable (or measured, as seen by complaints) determination by the recipient. For specific example, the business which sends solicitations by email to "sales prosepects" probably doesn't or can't define this activity as "spamming". On the other side of course are the hard core anti-spammers. And in the middle is the hapless recipient. The recipient has three options; delete it and move on, generate a complaint about having been spammed, or respond affirmatively by following up on the promotional offer. There's probably not much hard data to evaluate this. There probably is however pretty good generalized data on the responsiveness of "sales prospects". Whether it is 1:100 or 1:10000 in the affirmative, the hard fact is that the vast majority of "sales prospects" have been inconvenienced; and by now they are just plain tired of the abuse. So, persons and organizations which depend upon these methods continue to experience a difficult uphill battle. The other seemingly good hard data available comes from the deployment of well-managed "spam traps", being email addresses which are "seeded" into various fora which make them accessible to be used as "sales prospects". It can almost be viewed as an "entrapment". An example would be a mailto link on a webpage invisibly linked from a public page, so that it is impossible for a human to intentionally click their way to discover the mailto. Furthermore the mailto can state "this is a spamtrap address; if you use it, you will be reported as a abusive spammer." Now when the owner of that email address receives a sales promotion to that spamtrap address, were they spammed? Thanks for your considerations, -- Maynard _______________________________________________ spamcon-general mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.spamcon.org/mailman/listinfo/spamcon-general#subscribers Subscribe, unsubscribe, etc: Use the URL above or send "help" in body of message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Contact administrator: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
