I’m asking as both a consumer and potential spammer.
As a consumer, I get my share of pure spam, but I also get emails from companies I may have contacted once or twice but don’t want to hear from again. If I click on the Report Spam button in order to get rid of them do they get into any kind of trouble? Do they get a notification to stop emailing me?
As a potential spammer, my partners and I are always talking about new marketing ideas. We’ve never sent out a mass email to any kind of third party list, only to people who have requested to hear from us. If we do buy a list and use it, that makes us spammers, I guess. What’s the likely outcome as I’m sure there will be some disgruntled types who will hit the Report Spam button on us?
No, and no. The Report Spam button, depending on your email client, may do several different things. It may simply filter messages from that sender to your spam file, it may add the email to a central database of suspected spams, or it may take any number of other client-specific actions. In no case is any kind of contact established with the sender of the spam, since the origination details are often obscured in any case.
Little is accomplished by clicking a Report Spam button for email that comes from legitimate companies which have obtained your email address consensually. Worse, it may be detrimental if your email client relies on a database of real spams to filter stuff out. You may find legitimate emails from e-commerce sites being redirected to your spam folder.
If you want to stop receiving emails from a legitimate e-commerce site, they almost always include an “unsubscribe” link in the email, which will usually work. Real spam does not generally contain such a link.
If you send email to people with whom you have no prior business relationship you will probably get reported as spam frequently. This will result in the major email providers (Gmail, Yahoo, etc) and several ISPs blocking your email entirely for a period of days or weeks. It will also earn you much negative publicity.
Stick with the list of people who have given you their addresses, and make sure you have a working unsubscribe system.
On the contrary, real spam almost always has such a link. The difference is that while legitimate companies remove your address from their subscriber list when you click on the link, real spammers supposedly use these to add your name to a list of “verified” addresses that they send more spam to (on the grounds that you must actually read the spam, if you found their “unsubscribe” button).
If you are getting mail from, say, Dell Computer, you can trust them… click the “Unsubscribe link” at the bottom of the email.
If you are getting mail for, say, Cheap V!agra, then by all means never click anything within that email, for the reasons stated. It appears you use some web based email. Learn to differentiate between the “This is spam” links, and click the correct one.
Never, ever, ever, until you are 1,000,000% sure of your internet detective skill, ever ever click on any any ANY email from Ebay.
Ebay is a legit company.
But there are thousands of scammers who impersonate them to steal your personal information.
Rest assured, Ebay, Yahoo, Google, etc… NONE of these will ever ask you to click their link for “account verification”, etc…
If you’re unsure, just type it into your browser.
They get you by disguising the URL with, uh, “HACKER TECHNIQUES” (heh), and then you type your password in thinking you are on the real EBAY, but you’re not.
So just, as a rule, always skip them. Please.
Good luck.
I’d advise extreme caution when sending out emails from your company. Many areas have anti-spam laws and you could find yourself in court even if you think your customers want to hear from you.
You’ll want to make sure there are no Australians on your list:
So (in theory) you are breaking the law if you send spam that is subsequently read in Australia. No idea how they go about enforcing it, but apparently PDF Warning there’s some sort of agreement between Australia, the UK and the US.
Also, it’s jerkish behaviour that might cost you existing or potential customers when word gets out that you do it. Just don’t do it.
Keep in mind that if your “report spam” button happens to directly or indirectly cause that company to be reported to one of the organizations that maintain blacklists of spamming companies, reporting legitimate e-mail as spam may end up inconveniencing a lot of other customers if that company’s e-mails start getting refused by mail servers as being from a “known spammer”. I’ve missed user’s group meeting announcements because of that (I know because I was in contact by other means with one of the organizers and they forwarded me the bounce messages), and I’ve seen complaints from organizers of mailing lists I belong to about people doing that.
So, if a company/mailing list/whatever has been in legitimate contact with you and you want them to stop, either ask them properly or at least make sure you’re only filtering them out locally (I do have one company in my own spam filters because they wanted an account number which I no longer have to use their automated “remove me” and it was much quicker just to filter them than to find the right e-mail address to make a manual request to, but I certainly wouldn’t report them as spammers).
Thanks to laws enacted in the last couple years, spammers have been going to jail. A just and goodly fate I add. The companies that hired spammers to do the spamming and were claiming no knowlege or responseability for spaming, have been held responsible for the spaming also. Another just equalizing of accounts I’d say.
Just to give some perspective, I’d like to add a little bit about what we’re thinking of doing. The email list would be small, starting with about 700 addresses and probably never over 1000 addresses. And we’re a professional firm and get hired for the most part by other professionals. I don’t like to talk too much about what we do on message boards, but it would be similar to an expert witness in any field who wants law firms to know who he is and what he does. Our mailings would be brief and tasteful. We’d be letting people know things like a new partner joining the firm or a positive write-up in Forbes. And the purpose would be to keep our name out there.
And maybe one mailing every 4 to 6 weeks.
I wondering if that changes any of the advice or recommendations.
I think you’ve got your numbers reversed there. For every person who appreciates hearing what you’re up to, there are 1000 (at least a thousand) people who will mentally cross you off of their “good guys” list.
And the penalties for spamming, no matter how well intentioned, are only going to get more severe, not less.
I’m an officially certified psycho. I myself am not particularly violent, but it only takes one of us to remove your genitalia with a rusty pair of dull scissors for spamming, and if that were to happen, 100 other people would applaud.
Spammers rate somewhere above baby-rapists and below pimps and crack sellers. Please find something reputable to do for a living instead.