Spam and spammers refuse to die. They are harder to kill than a horse fly!
On Thu 2006/09/21 @ 06:59 AM I sent an unsubscribe request in response to an email from a local institution reputed to be notorious for its propensity for sending you unsolicited emails and claiming you had requested said cyber junk mail on their website.
Subsequent to that I received nothing. Granted, I do have a number of spam filtering mechanisms protecting me, many resident within the Storm network, the final one lurking on my laptop and regularly washing my mail account on the server before Outlook bustles over to check the server. I gave no more thought to it.
Yesterday, between 11:09 PM & 11:52 PM, I received no less than 3 promotional items from the very same crowd (using a gmail.com account this time), in which they claim:
"xyz.com complies with the Communications ACT. To opt-out from receiving future newsletters, send an e mail to unsubscribe@XXX.com with unsubscribe in the subject line, or click here and enter the e mail address at which you received this newsletter. All unsubscribe requests are honored within 3 working days."
Today, I received 4 more.
So.
Bearing in mind that this sort of email makes up 70% to 80% of the mail traffic out there on the Net, gobbling up precious bandwidth we could be using to make the Broadband ecosystem work better, do you think the ECT (as opposed to the EC) Act protects us enough? (note they mention "the Communications Act" above, which could mean the EC Act, or the ECT Act!)
What do you think I should do gentle reader?
I have unsubscribed a 2nd time, but should I expend some precious time exploring the legal options open to me? (This involves a tortuous path through SAPS)
Should I reset the parameters of my spam filters, hunker down and try to ignore the buzzing horse fly that is draining scarce resources?
Should I just mail the sad gits a bunch of dead flowers?
you tell me.
Rob,
I intend to be more public about it once I've made up my mind on the way forward, but naming and shaming is not that effective imho.
Alan,
Thanks for the opinion. I'm aware of the bounty, but unless I incur costs I have to cover, I'd opt for donating it to a favourite charity.
So Mervyn,
You've been silent. I know you subscribe to my blog feed. How about stating your case? I'm not convinced you have one, but here's an open forum - I don't moderate comments yet (although I do reserve the right to nuke them if I believe they're offensive)... the floor is yours.
Dave
Posted by: DaveG | 30 July 2007 at 09:04 AM
Naming and shaming is one that's had some success but we don't have any legal precedent in SA, so I must vote for the formal legal channel. This doesn't require lawyers either!
I know it can take (your) time, but that's why we created the spammer bounty programme, you'll get compensated. See http://wiki.isoc.org.za
Posted by: Alan Levin | 30 July 2007 at 08:45 AM
Dave I think you should start by naming and shaming.
I've just sent my latest unsubscribe request... following my previous emails AND phone calls. If this doesn't work, I'm with you on taking this mofo to the next level.
Posted by: Rob Stokes | 29 July 2007 at 12:39 PM
Thanks Marc, but these guys will just claim that my email address is available to anyone with a Search Engine and half a brain cell or that they picked it up from a public list like IOZ. We're beyond that. We're at the point where I have formally requested that they do not send me any more mail... and they have.
Should they have the right to harvest email addresses and then send unsolicited emails?
Should the Act not be more protective?
Dave
Posted by: DaveG | 28 July 2007 at 02:11 PM
this is quite a handy template to use ;)
http://www.internet.org.za/spam_message.txt
Posted by: Marc | 28 July 2007 at 01:10 PM