One of the plagues of the Internets, one of those sterling examples of a technology victimized by its own success, is unsolicited bulk email. It is obnoxious. It is a hassle for recipients and system administrators. It is a pain to identify in an automated manner, spawning an entire sub-industry of professionals dedicated to thwarting it. Frankly it’s a theft of service. It’s also fairly easy to get involved in accidentally.
For people that have been using the Internets since before they were re-pluralized, the notion of just adding a big batch of total strangers to your mailing list wouldn’t even come up. Who’d do that? It’s terrible etiquette. Sadly Miss Manners hasn’t quite spread the word. Happily, the folks at MailChimp have an excellent listing of representative scenarios to help illuminate the unwashed masses that are looking to do some legitimate mailing:
“I bought a list of 30 million emails from this guy on the Internet, and…”
Stop right there. Don’t use MailChimp. Don’t use anything. Throw away the list. Turn off the computer. Snip the power cord, so this doesn’t happen again. Now go punch yourself in the gut.
It’s an entertaining read, especially if you already know better.
That’s pretty good. Anytime someone asks me about “mass mailing” at work I still call it spam, but they don’t like that. Currently though, they don’t use a “confirmation” process in the opt-in process, so it’s still really spam. I tell them, I get catalogs from Musicians Friend and Guitar Center all the time, and I never asked for it; I still call it junk mail, even though I enjoy looking at the sale items… spam is spam is spam.
A confirmed opt-in mechanism assures that the recipients opted in, but isn’t absolutely necessary to run a reasonably non-spammy announcement list. As for unsolicited mail that’s still welcomed by its recipient (like your Guitar Center mail), that’s quite the exception. I’m guessing that as some point you bought something from these people, and they’re trying to get you to buy more? At least in that context there is a reasonable expectation that you’re interested in what they’re peddling. If some jerk just picked your mail address out of a hat and randomly started sending you unsolicited mail that you just happened to be interested in, hey wow.
this is a test for comment auto-fill stuff… john, you can delete this or what.
sorry… you hate me, I know.
last time, I swear
You trying for “msilver” or “chunkbot” there, monkey-boy?
Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.