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Home / Internet / Spam
Real Businesses Send Spam, Too!
By:Jerry Weinstock
Unsolicited Commercial Email or Spam has grown at epidemic proportions. It is rapidly becoming the number one problem that Information Technology departments deal with on a day-to-day basis, surpassing computer viruses. The volume and percentage of unwanted email received in business and personal email inboxes is starting to overwhelm and drown out legitimate email.
Although the vast majority of this bulk email is being perpetrated by individual spammers and a few large bulk mailers pushing pornography, gambling, get rich schemes, ‘medicinal cures’ and bootleg software, real businesses have been caught in the web also by committing several errors. The three ways a legitimate business falls into the Spam mode are: 1. Legal non-Compliance, 2. Violating Trust, and 3. Lack of Value.
Legal non-Compliance
Through the end of 2003 it was very difficult to comply with Spam laws as twenty six states had passed their own laws dealing either directly with the process of sending unsolicited commercial email or the format requirements of bulk email.
With the passage of the Federal law – “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003” or better known as the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, it has become a lot easier to understand and apply the rules. Real businesses should have no problem complying with all aspects of the law and those that don’t will find themselves in legal jeopardy for significant penalties.
The process components of the law won’t be an issue for real businesses, they don’t fake the reply address, they don’t hijack someone else’s mail server nor do they contain falsified routing information. Where they are likely to fail are in three specific areas.
1) Neglecting to include a valid physical address in the body of the email.
2) Not having a functional Internet-based opt-out mechanism, which must be active for a minimum of 30 days after the email has been sent.
3) Failing to include clear and conspicuous identification that the message is an advertisement or solicitation. Most State laws approached this similar provision by requiring the use of the letters ADV: in the beginning of the subject line. The Federal doesn’t specify how this is to be accomplished; thereby, leaving it open to a wide range of interpretation.
There are several additional areas that are process related that may trip up the sender unintentionally.
1) The sender rents or purchasing a defective email list, for example one that has individuals that have already opted-out of email communications.
2) They use a ‘tricky’ subject line to entice recipients to open the message. Subject lines that stretch the truth could be identified as misleading the purpose of the email and therefore be a violation.
3) Agents or related 3rd parties that have business relationship with the firm send out Spam. This could put the company in jeopardy if it can be proven that they were aware of the related company’s activities.
Although the Federal law isn’t perfect one significant advantage it does offer to real businesses is that there is now only one place they need to go to check the rules before a company embarks onto an email marketing program.
Violating Trust
Trust is one of the major stumbling blocks keeping the publics’ enthusiasm for the Internet in check. And when it comes to providing their email address that is in the eye of the storm. The overwhelming concern people have about providing a company their email address is that it will be shared, loaned, rented, sold or carelessly unprotected. Sharing lists internally between product lines, departments, or divisions and externally with ‘business partners’ stretches the permission basis originally given by the subscriber. When opt-in lists developed at one website are resold to list brokers, real businesses that rent these lists automatically become spammers because recipients are typically applying this litmus test to commercial email they receive: “Email marketing is for product/service information I’ve specifically requested, Spam is sent without asking for it”.
Businesses embarking down the eMarketing path often have in-house databases that include email addresses of suspects, prospects, and clients. The conversion of these lists, developed on a relationship basis, to a formal subscriber list treads a fine line and should be considered very carefully before assuming that permission has been granted.
Lack of Value
Every time you send email to your list members, you will be judged, and in some cases, it may appear to have been done unfairly. In today’s environment subscribers are now becoming annoyed at a variety of shortcomings, such as messages about products they seldom buy, messages that serve the sender more than the recipient, unsubscribe processes that don’t work, ‘hard sell’ messages or even messages in formats that can’t be properly displayed in the recipient’s mail program.
The plain simple truth is that even in a permission email environment, recipients are now applying their own tests for Spam whether they opted in or not. These are natural human reactions to the mailings they receive – it can be as straightforward as “Email marketing is email I like, Spam is email I don’t like.”
How to Fix
Real businesses need to insure that they aren’t jeopardizing their brand name by meeting or exceeding the best practices for email marketing. Auditing the list, evaluating your content and insuring proper conformance with the documentation process in the permission mailing process are the key components to a successful campaign.
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Article keywords: spam, email marketing, fighting spam, permission email marketing, email newsletters, legal, law, spam law suits, suing spammers
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com
In 1996 Jerry was one of the first to develop a for-profit HTML based e-mail newsletter targeting a niche marketplace. At the height of the dot-com craze, he sold a permission-based e-mail newsletter business (AutoIdeas.com) for a niche market for the rate of $33 per name – a rate that was previously unthinkable. He regularly speaks on the subjects of e-mail marketing, technology integration for small business and fighting spam to professional associations, including marketing, security, and building construction associations, and at technology industry trade shows. In 2002 Jerry became the first and ultimately only Kansas resident to successfully file 12 lawsuits against bulk mailers that spammed iBizInitiatives with unsolicited mail. To chronicle the successful lawsuits and educate other people, he created the Web site – KansasNoSpam.com www.KansasNoSpam.com Learn more about our anti-spam efforts www.ibizinitiatives.com/fightingspam.asp
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- 1). Free Spam Blockers By : Matt Garrett
Remember when spam was just another horrible thing you would never eat? And then you grew up a little and spam became the lyrics to a great Monty Python song. And now spam is something to avoid at all costs. Or, in the case of free spam blockers, at no cost at all. Everything is better when it’s free, right? Such is the case with blocking out annoying spam from your email account, too.
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- 2). Save Time, Money and Hassle - Stop Spam By : Justin Brown
Spam can be an absolute nightmare, and one that seems to spiral out of control in some of my email accounts. If i've been away for a few days and haven't had a chance to check my emails, I dread having to open up my email client when I get back online in anticipation of hundreds or thousands of spam emails.
Although I simply delete these emails, for some, they seem legitimate messages that can often cause the recipient to become the subject of a fraudulent activity.
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- 3). Antispam Organization Out There That's Fighting For You By : Robert Michael
There's an antispam organization out there that's fighting for you and could use your help.
CAUCE, the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail, is an all-volunteer global entity that began as SPAM-LAW, a group brought together for discussion only. They put all their efforts into getting legislation passed that would help stop and penalize spam.
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- 5). Real Businesses Send Spam, Too! By : Jerry Weinstock
Unsolicited Commercial Email or Spam has grown at epidemic proportions. It is rapidly becoming the number one problem that Information Technology departments deal with on a day-to-day basis, surpassing computer viruses. The volume and percentage of unwanted email received in business and personal email inboxes is starting to overwhelm and drown out legitimate email.
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The most prolific and path breaking innovation of last century had been the developments in the communication field. It literally changed the business working, product marketing, support services and most importantly, the advertisement campaigns.
But just like all goods things comes with a price, so was the communication. It brought in the problems of Spam Emails.
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- 7). How Do Anti Spam Solutions Work? By : Paton Jackson
We have all suffered from these annoying dangerous spam emails. Most of us still do. There are excellent anti spam solutions in the market, there is no reason to tolerate this no more.
To understand the solution we must first understand the problem. So, what is this spam email? Spam is unsolicited, unwanted, irrelevant or inappropriate email. Spam email is mostly used for commercial purposes.
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- 8). How to Reduce Spam in Your Inbox and Enhance Your Email Security By : Richard Rogers
Spam is the internet’s equivalent of junk mail. Spam is defined as an e-mail message sent to people without their consent or permission. Addresses of recipients are often harvested from Usenet postings or web pages, obtained from databases, or simply guessed by using common names and domains.
Spam is sent to promote practically any product or service ranging from “Adult” products to logo design for websites.
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- 9). Seven tips for securing your organization´s network from spam and email viruses By : Todd Green
Seven tips for securing your organization´s network from spam and email viruses
Providing security against email related threats has become a burden for most IT professionals in 2006. According to a recent study by Postini, spam and email viruses now make up to 80% of all emails sent out as compared to 50% in 2000. As a result, IT professionals now face a tougher challenge in providing network security for this amount of spam.
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With anti spam vendors offering low cost licensing, businesses can now afford advanced email spam and virus protection with a simple to use interface at a much lower cost. The great thing about technology is that as it evolves it gets faster, additional features and economical. Over the past few years the same evolution has taken place with anti spam technology and services.
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| New Spam Articles |
- 1). Identifying Spam When it Arrives By : Keith Londrie
Most of us have opened our email program and found, alongside correspondence from people that we know, offers for products from commercial web sites. Some of these emails we expect. We have asked to be notified of sales and other opportunities or joined a mailing list offered by the company.
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- 2). Save Time, Money and Hassle - Stop Spam By : Justin Brown
Spam can be an absolute nightmare, and one that seems to spiral out of control in some of my email accounts. If i've been away for a few days and haven't had a chance to check my emails, I dread having to open up my email client when I get back online in anticipation of hundreds or thousands of spam emails.
Although I simply delete these emails, for some, they seem legitimate messages that can often cause the recipient to become the subject of a fraudulent activity.
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- 3). A Quick Look At Email Spam Filters By : Oliver Turner
You must be eagerly finding for a way out to stop receiving Spam mails in your inbox. Take a quick look at email spam filters to get some idea on how to check spam. There are a number of email spam filters that you can use in your computer. For official purposes, you have anti server software spam where the spam filter is located in the server level to trap all email spam.
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- 4). An Introduction To Spam Filters By : Peter Emerson
Using spam filters is another very effective way of combating spam or junk mail. These programs use some keywords like ‘guaranteed’, ‘free’, etc and block any email with those words in them. But this has the disadvantage of sometimes blocking even important mails from your contacts and preventing those senders from sending mails to your address again.
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- 5). What Is Spam? By : Daniel J.Fox
You have probably seen an increase in the amount of junk mail which shows up in your email box, or on your favorite newsgroup. The activities of a small number of people are becoming a bigger problem for the Internet.
Chain letters that ask for money, whether for reports or just straight up, are illegal in the US whether they are in postal mail or e-mail.
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- 6). Fighting Spam! By : Darry J.Oswald
It's been nearly a decade since spammers and their enemies begun evolving competitively. As with the classic cheetah/gazelle model originally formulated by Darwin, each time one group becomes a little faster or more agile, its adversaries develop traits for outwitting and outrunning it.
In addition to wasting people's time with unwanted e-mail, spam also eats up a lot of network bandwidth.
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- 7). Two Main Groups Of Spam! By : Camry James
There are two main types of spam, and they have different effects on Internet users. Cancellable Usenet spam is a single message sent to 20 or more Usenet newsgroups. (Through long experience, Usenet users have found that any message posted to so many newsgroups is often not relevant to most or all of them.) Usenet spam is aimed at lurkers, people who read newsgroups but rarely or never post and give their address away.
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- 8). Antispam. Aren't We All! Don't You Just Hate It? By : Robert Michael
Antispam. Aren't we all! Don't you just hate it? You've got enough to do without having to sift through a bunch of worthless, or worse yet, offensive junk e-mails in your Inbox.
So what can be done about it? What antispam procedures and software really work?
Spam filtering software is the first stop in your antispam campaign, but in some ways it's the easiest to subvert.
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- 9). Everybody Hates Spam By : Jay Ashley
There is nothing like checking your email only to find out that your inbox is swamped with unsolicited message from people you do not know. No you’re not interested to buy dog food, beauty products, slimming pills, plants, or software! But still, you get these irritating emails.
Spam, this tiny four letter word has annoyed millions of people around the world.
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People who begin their online business ventures would naturally be unaware of many of the internet business rules, protocols and etiquettes. Yet, as in any law, the internet law does not forgive for ignorance. One of the most important issues that are governed by many controls over the internet is Spamming.
A beginner in online business can very easily fall unintentionally into the spamming trap while conducting internet marketing activity to promote his/her business.
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