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The opt-out from hell

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One problem with making your email address available (which I will continue to do, don't worry) is that folks with something to sell assume you're interested in their stuff. To wit, let's consider an email I received today (copied, headers and all, after my griping).

Note that if I want to opt out of further communications, I have to do two separate things -- which actually becomes three things.

  • First I have to click the last link to opt out of future TechTarget spam. (Yes, I deleted the actual links. But certainly none of my trustworthy readers would attempt to re-subscribe me, right...? <g>
  • But that isn't enough -- I also have to separately opt out of future Avaya spam! (Why does the no-more-from-Avaya link live on a techtargetmail.com server? Whatever.) Clicking on that link eventually does land me on an avaya.com page, where I have to confirm my email address and indicate they don't have my permission to send me spam. Hmm, too difficult to embed my email in that link, when the other techtargetmail.com link did embed my email?
  • Then after submitting it, another page pops up telling me that I'll soon receive an email with additional instructions! In this email there's a link -- to avaya.com with my email address embedded -- that I must click, I guess to double plus confirm that yes, I really really really do wish never to hear from you again. Clicking that link takes me to a page that promises my "permissions have successfully been set. Thank you."

A pox on both your houses, TechTarget and Avaya. I never asked for your stuff. Go away.

Spam, my friends, is only going to get worse. It was so easy to ban junk faxes in 1991. But even those regulations were weakened in 2005. So do you really think we'll see anything even remotely logical for outlawing spam? I doubt it, unless we the citizens foment a revolt. Let's get cracking!

 

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Reply-To: Avaya <a818b044.724694.236c8ee748f7dd97.1.n.4@pp.techtargetmail.com>
From: Avaya <Avaya@pp.techtargetmail.com>
To: Steve Riley <steriley@microsoft.com>
Subject: 7 Tips to Ensure Readiness for UC Deployment
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Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    September 16, 2008
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    September 17, 2008
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    September 17, 2008
    The following message was sent to you as a subscriber to third party offers from a TechTarget property...

It's always amazing to me when people sign up for opt-in mailing lists, forget and claim it's spam. You've completely distorted the meaning of the term spam. Spam is unsolicited. Simply pay attention when you check off subscriber boxes on websites. If you don't know the frequency or scope, then don't sign up for it. Next you'll be saying you're not even a member of that website. Pul-leeze.

  • Anonymous
    September 17, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 19, 2008
    Given the international nature of the internet, everyone is bound to eventually start receiving loads of spam, unless you change your address regularly. Proposals to solve this problem in ways that requires worldwide cooperation are unviable. The only way to solve the spam problem definitely is to adopt a practice whereby you can easily create unique and unpredictable variations on your email address and hand them out to people, and only those variations that you create will work. After doing so, you don't need to opt out of the stuff that people send you in the first place, you just cancel that one address. The nice properties of this solution are that (1) it gets rid of all your spam, (2) there is no false-positive problem, (3) anyone can start using it today, and it will be effective even if no one else does. The disadvantage of this solution is that it requires technology that mostly isn't there in most mail servers today. But this is a trivial problem compared to getting laws passed, enforcing them, and getting Russia to comply.

  • Anonymous
    December 01, 2008
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  • Anonymous
    March 25, 2009
    The comment has been removed