SPAM - tastes good when your hungry?

SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (Full Version)

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Mojo -> SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/14/2003 11:33:07)
The idea was brought up that we discuss SPAM. We can pretend that it is not worthy of discussion and remain in ignorance or we can openly discuss it. It was also brought up that we have some rules regarding the discussion. That said -- The only rule that I can think is leave emotion out of the discussion. More rules may arise. [:D] The common belief towards SPAM is: 1) Spam should be illegal or spammers banned from internet. 2) People who click spam are _____ (fill in the blank). Questions: Who is very opposed to SPAM? -- I am not asking for names of people or votes from forum members, rather I am interested in demographics. Example: Most computer programmers that I know are against SPAM. My parents seem to enjoy getting lots of email... Does the average internet user hold the same anti-SPAM beliefs as we do? -- to clarify, the average internet user would never be on these or other tech forums. Have you ever employed SPAM? Why would you use SPAM? If you are going to use the SPAM tool, should there be a standard to it? If so, what should the standard be? -- example: a link to click to be removed from your list... (although, should you remove them entirely?) If you have employed the SPAM tool, what were your results? Bring up any other issues - such as law (be able to prove it). We are looking for an open, honest, non-flamming discussion towards a giant marketing tool. A last thought -- In the way that illegal money is laundered, can SPAM listed be converted into legit lists? Again, how?

Doug G -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/14/2003 19:16:34)
How can you discuss openly something that is completely disgusting? Spam is, and by inference spammers are rude disgusting obnoxious liars pornographers frauds con artists poor spellers Anyone besides me get a tons of spam from people claiming you opted-in to their list? What a bunch of creeps. I heard the spammer guy in Florida who went public some time back is now getting his own spam - it seems a large number of people who disapprove of email spam have signed him up for every snail-mail junk mail list they can think of, and the guy is now paying a lot to remove all the tons of junk mail he gets at his house. And, guess what, he' s complaining about it [:D] What a hoot! You can put me down in the undecided column about the pros & cons of spam [:D][:P]

abbeyvet -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/14/2003 19:57:42)
I think most of us would largely agree with you Doug, but the problem is that spam works. You may just hit delete, and I may do the same but it seems enough people open them and enough of those bite to make it a handsomely rewarding exercise for those sending them. I, like Joe, have had experience of this. A client of mine - in that I built his site, I have no input into anything else on an ongoing basis - was persuaded to buy in to amiling list purchase thing, of which I do not have precise details. But he sent out, using a service of some kind, Lord knows how may emails to people who had definitely not opted in to receive mail about what is a very specific service. He did more business in 1 week than he had in the previous year. It was very, very hard for me, in conversation with him, to try to persuade him that he had done a ' bad' thing, when the guy had just got the best ROI ever from a marketing initiative. I came accross a survey somewhere, and I wish I could recall where, that said that spam emails have a click through rate of between 4% and 6%. That is incredibly high when you think about the sheer volume of mails that are sent and how unfocused they are. Lets say that 5% click through and 5% of them buy something. Think of the figures. A little looking about and I see that the going rate for sending spam is about $350 per million emails, though I imagine it can be done for less - I came accross one site that claims to allow you to send 300,000,000 emails a month for $30. But lets work with the higher figure. If the 5%/5% presumtion holds true, then you will have 2500 customers, and you will have them very cheap. Or if the percentages are way off, and only 1% click through and 1% buy, then you will still have 100 customers. Now it depends on what you are selling and how much you pay, but the figures do stack up - $3.50 per customer is not very expensive in the worst case, 14c is incredible in the best case. Obviously if you care about your brand, you will destroy it in no time flat this way. But if you are selling something fast then moving on, as most of these spammers are, then you will make money, and it is that simple. I am not intending to write here in support of spam - it annoys me as much as anyone - but it is folly to think it will be beaten, ever. With those sort of numbers it is not going away. I also do not have any answers as to how to solve it - I doubt it can be really, though I use spamnet and that helps on an individual basis. I repeat again the report from a UK police source (again I can' t remember which one, I should bookmark these things) who said that there are on average 5 people a day sitting in London Hotels waiting for a Nigerian guy with a bag full of money. And it people are still falling for that one, there is no hope at all.

Mojo -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/14/2003 21:19:55)
Excellent post Katherine. I think the Nigerian email that is all over the place is something more than SPAM. They seem like criminals. The same kind of people that steal old ladies savings. This kind of SPAM appears different to me than someone blasting out a million emails selling ' truck accessories' . Besides the tech industry - how many average internet users are so worked up about SPAM? It does not seem it is a big issue. For a former employer we sent out over 100,000 emails to supposedly people who play golf. They paid for my entire years salary with that one campaign... What could I say?

Doug G -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/14/2003 21:35:44)
I think spam could be beaten with technology, not legislation. It' s way too easy to spoof mail headers when sending. You can telnet to most smtp servers and create a message on the fly with completely bogus headers and there is basically no way to trace the message back to you. And worse, the bogus message is sent at no cost to me! There' s the rub, there is no cost to spammers. The problem would be manageable if there was a way that the spammer had to pay for the traffic rather than the recipient, and disallowing open smtp servers could make that happen. Coupled with an " official" SMTP blacklist maintained by domain registrars who can do something about bad SMTP servers would quickly shut the door on the open relays. At the same time the unofficial blackhole guys can go out of business. The overseas remailers will require some more work but I believe they too can be stopped. The most recent PC Magazine cover story is on spam. According to their article, some 76 Billion spam mails will be sent in 2003, and nearly 40% of all email will be unsolicited/unwanted. The buy rates from spam are very low, a small fraction of a percent. But when you have a spam server capable of sending 1 million spams/hour you don' t need a very high buy rate to make money. If the spammer server had to pay for that traffic, well, problem solved!

Doug G -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/14/2003 21:44:06)
quote: It does not seem it is a big issue. For a former employer we sent out over 100,000 emails to supposedly people who play golf. They paid for my entire years salary with that one campaign... Sorry to hear that :( See the above post why I totally disagree that " it does not seem it is a big issue" . 70+ billion email messages is I believe quite a bit more than the USPS delivered by snail mail in total. The article stated that the average will be about 2000 spams/user/year. At the current trend spam will be the Internet killer. I work with small business clients, many of whom have become disappointed with email as a business tool because of spam. How many man hours are wasted deleting spam? I spend maybe 2-5 minutes/day cleaning spam out of my mailboxes, without even opening them. The total time per day spent by all internet users dealing with spam must be a staggering number.

LB -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/14/2003 23:14:12)
quote: I spend maybe 2-5 minutes/day cleaning spam out of my mailboxes, without even opening them. www.spamnet.com -- I set up the spam to go to my deleted folder instead of a spam folder and it emptys automatically. Only thing it' s deleted so far that I didn' t want it to was a Godaddy email, but I might have accidently clicked delete on that. I' ve whitelisted it (in spamnet' s options) just to be sure! [;)] Linda

bowbell -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/14/2003 23:36:17)
quote: quote: I spend maybe 2-5 minutes/day cleaning spam out of my mailboxes, without even opening them. How much time do you spend a day dealing with snail junk mail or watching(ignoring) TV ads? Or dealing with telemarketers? Spam is here to stay, just like all advertising

Mojo -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/14/2003 23:48:57)
This is an interesting discussion for sure, but we are missing some of the original questions/issues. Doug pointed out the PC Magazine cover on spam. But, for those of us that are directly involved in ecommerce - does what PC magazine says about spam matter a whit to our customer base? I have a site that currently generates 80% of my income (I am trying to diversify lately). At one point in time I read that the average age of the customer who purchases what I am selling is 45 years. Does the average 45 year old internet user care about spam? Something I wonder about - Do we as tech people receive more spam because we are more exposed? Could our email addresses just be more easily available because we have given it out more often than the average user? Once, in my 15 minutes of fame, I wrote an article for a very popular ASP site. My email address was on the homepage for almost a month. From that point on, my email address has been a target. Maybe we are just more out-there?

Doug G -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/15/2003 0:26:29)
quote: How much time do you spend a day dealing with snail junk mail or watching(ignoring) TV ads? Or dealing with telemarketers? I don' t get the point, unless you are trying to say that spam is in the same class as the above activities. Personally I think spam is slightly above robot telemarketers, but only slightly. Spam via cell phone text messaging is worse that spam in email boxes too. :) I hope outfront doesn' t become a community that tacitly approves of spam. That would be depressing, this is a pretty nice place to visit. I' m happy to say I think spamming is not just wrong, but very, very wrong regardless of the income it generates. Most spammers must agree since it' s a very rare spammer that will reveal their identity openly. Every person gets to make their own choices about what they will or won' t do for money. $0000000000000000.02

abbeyvet -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/15/2003 5:08:05)
quote: 5 people a day sitting in London Hotels waiting for a Nigerian guy I know that is different from spam per se in that it is a criminal operation. It just shows how gullible - or maybe I should say naive - people are, if a scam that has had such a lot of publicity and been around so long can still find targets. quote: I hope outfront doesn' t become a community that tacitly approves of spam. That would be depressing, I don' t think that is at all likely. And I really hope my post did not suggest that I approved of spam in any way. I hate the stuff with a passion. Though actually, like Linda, I very rarely see any spam these days anyway since I started using spamnet so I am not contributing much to the wasted time spent dealing with it. When I do see some it is a pleasure to, with a click of the mouse, make it disappear not just from my inbox but from many thousands of others at the same time. It is just an issue that any discussion of tends to be quite narrow. I suppose that given that there is - whether you like it or not - money to be made from Spam, then looking at that side of the issue can be illuminating. Because Doug, you are right, legitimate use of email as a marketing tool is suffering. So questions like how to differentiate legitimate marketing from spam, what is the difference and where is the line in the sand, how to make the difference clear to the end user etc are important questions that are not often discussed at any length because such discussions tend to turn into rails against spam. As a very basic example take the devaluation of the unsubscribe link. Most legitimate marketing emails - those you have genuinely opted in for, even if you have forgotten you did - will have one. But it has reached a point where I, for one, would not click on one of these in an email in most cases as I am concerned that rather than removing myself from a list I could be verifying the fact that I open spam. How do legitimate marketers get around that?

caywind -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/15/2003 18:00:48)
quote: Spam is here to stay, just like all advertising couple of other kinks for you.... The US gov just enacted a " don' t call" list for telemarketers. It' s my belief that that will soon pass on to SPAM. Guess what, they' ll figure out a way to get around it! Spam is illegal in many states. I myself had a small part in taking out a spammer in CA. (I just kept reporting them everytime I got something). Guess what, they just moved offshore and the SPAM keeps rolling in. My take: SPAM is a big productivity waster. So I only spend five minutes a day cleaning out my inbox. Thats 30 hours a year. Now, what if I have a thousand employees clearing out SPAM. Thats 30,000 hours a year that I just paid people for nothing!. At a bare minimum of say $5 an hour, SPAM just cost me $150,000 a year. Throw in a virus or two, and yes I have received SPAM that contained viruses....

bowbell -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/16/2003 0:33:58)
quote: SPAM is a big productivity waster. My point was that most advertising falls in the same class as spam. The small hair salon that I own recieves around 3lbs of junk mail a day by snail mail. That is much more difficult and expensive to deal with than spam. And much more wastful of the earths resources. The only advertising that I can think of right now that is not intrusive is the yellow pages.

PBailey -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/16/2003 3:30:38)
Interesting discussion. I certainly dislike spam, however, I think Joe brings up some good points. quote: Does the average 45 year old internet user care about spam? Something I wonder about - Do we as tech people receive more spam because we are more exposed? Could our email addresses just be more easily available because we have given it out more often than the average user? I had never thought about it before but those I hear complain the most are those in the tech related part of my world. I hear some complaints from others but it never seems to be the topic of discussion like it is in tech circles. If it does become a topic it is usually the porn related stuff. No one wants their kids seeing that stuff. Think I' ll start bringing it up and see what those outside the tech world really do think. An interesting note about Spamnet...it considers some of the newsletters I subscribe to ( tech, travel, and finance) to be spam so someone somewhere looks at them that way. Maybe spam is in the eye of the beholder. Where is the line between Spam and ethical ecommerce marketing? Is it a number? Is it a type of business? Or is it a matter of cost to send out as Doug suggested? If the sender pays to send it, is it no longer spam? It still ends up in my mailbox without invitation. ( I do agree that cost would slow it down a whole lot but doubt the feasibility of effectively doing that) As Katherine has pointed out, it makes money. It will be very hard to stop. All I can say at this time is Viva la Spamnet!

Mojo -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/16/2003 10:44:03)
quote: I hope outfront doesn' t become a community that tacitly approves of spam. Where did you get that idea? Should we not openly discuss one of the best $$ generating tools in the industry? Or, should we say we already know everything about it and close our eyes? I don' t like opening certain kinds of spam (porn, gambling, Nigerian despots...). But, I don' t mind most others. I spend less than 1 minute deleting spam a day. Sometimes I click, sometimes I don' t. I agree with bowbell in that snail mail spam seems like it is a more serious waste of resources. Question: What would make spam as acceptable as the snail mail spam that we all receive almost every day? Question #2: What is wrong with spam? (not counting porn and scams - also, can you quantify what is wrong with spam?)

Mojo -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/16/2003 10:57:32)
quote: My take: SPAM is a big productivity waster. So I only spend five minutes a day cleaning out my inbox. Thats 30 hours a year. Now, what if I have a thousand employees clearing out SPAM. Thats 30,000 hours a year that I just paid people for nothing!. At a bare minimum of say $5 an hour, SPAM just cost me $150,000 a year. OK. How much time per day do you or others spend reading posts in the Lounge? Or, how much time per day do employees spend reading personal email in their Hotmail/Yahoo accounts, checking stocks, reading online news clips or visiting other forums? EDIT: Removed part of post that really did not relate to the SPAM topic.

Gil -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/16/2003 12:02:37)
quote: Mojojojo: For a former employer we sent out over 100,000 emails to supposedly people who play golf. They paid for my entire years salary with that one campaign... And you could pay for three - four years with a Porn campaign - do you do that? I am well aware of the fact that spam is profitable, as is postal junk mail and telemarketing. But I (for one) have to answer to the guy I face every morning in the mirror and choose not to have to justify my actions! How many as old as I remember, " If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem" ? My .02 worth

Gil -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/16/2003 12:04:59)
quote: OK. How much time per day do you or others spend reading posts in the Lounge? Or, how much time per day do employees spend reading personal email in their Hotmail/Yahoo accounts, checking stocks, reading online news clips or visiting other forums? The lounge? - Maybe go there once a week Don' t have a Hotmail/Yahoo account Stocks, News, " other" forums? - None

Doug G -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/16/2003 15:07:10)
quote: OK. How much time per day do you or others spend reading posts in the Lounge? Or, how much time per day do employees spend reading personal email in their Hotmail/Yahoo accounts, checking stocks, reading online news clips or visiting other forums? There seems to be some logical leaps here. The amount of time spent on other activities, either productive or non-productive, doesn' t matter and has no relevance to the spam discussion. It' s nothing but a red herring and diversion from the discussion at hand. In a Venn diagram the circles wouldn' t intersect :) Snail mail junk mail is similar to spam but there is one big difference - organizations that send junk mail actually have to pay for the transport. In fact, it is the major revenue source for the USPS. I would have a lot less objection to spam email if the spammers had to pay for the transport, but the fact is that in many instances the recipient of the spam has to pay for the pleasure of receiving the spam. Spam may well force the adoption of metered internet access in the US. The number of spams per day greatly exceeds the number of junk mails per day, at least for me. There is no restriction on the content of spam like there is with junk mail. Subject lines of spam can blare out very offensive text, unsuitable for children and most adults, without any recourse by the recipient. Spammers often use techniques in their messages that are at best questionable, imho unethical. Every time I receive a spam mail claiming that I opted in to their mailing, I wish there was some legal recourse against the liar in question. The only reason I see that spam makes money is because of the virtual giveaway in sending costs. As a small business person, when I did a mass mailing to my customer base of around 1000 pieces, I had to plunk down my $150.00 bucks or so. Life in the spam world would be much more tolerable if spammers had to pay an equivalent transport cost to send their junk mails. As I said earlier, everyone can choose what they will or won' t do for money. I believe there will ultimately be a technical solution to spam emails. Why? Because many, many people feel as I do that spam is a big problem. Within the last couple months aol has made a serious attempt to prevent spam. Internet backbone companies are discussing removal of the public peering points, and a big factor in this discussion is the amount of spam traffic. Do we want to have Internet connectivity only to " partners" backbones? Internet 2 is already in progress, not open to the general public. Sometimes the anti-spam efforts are unhelpful, particularly the unregulated blackhole lists. Domains have been added to such lists maliciously, and there is no oversight that allows an entity to get off such a list. I had a client hosted at a Verio company a couple years ago, and the Verio mailserver got on a blackhole list. My client lost email from their website for a couple days. If it had been just a small ISP without the clout of a Verio, I imagine they might have lost email for weeks. So, IMHO if you spam you are contributing to all of the above negative pressures on the Internet. Personally, I hope the Libertarian approach works and the Internet solves it' s own problems without governmental intervention, but the problem presented by spam is huge, and is in the US government radar already.

Mojo -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/16/2003 21:52:43)
quote: And you could pay for three - four years with a Porn campaign - do you do that? The idea was to discuss an internet tool with reason. Base, ignorant accusations that don' t directly accuse someone of disgusting behavior, but imply it are sophmoric at best. quote: But I (for one) have to answer to the guy I face every morning in the mirror and choose not to have to justify my actions Emotional -- but you did not explain why spam would cause you to feel immoral. quote: " If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem" ? Is the problem any spam or immoral spam? Is the solution jack-booted internet nazi' s dictating what can or can' t be done? Is there a middle ground? Really, I was hoping for a more mature response. I think I head that quote used by a Junior High teacher. Not quite the big leagues. --------------------------------------------------- It would have been nice to hear what kinds of spam get the best response. Or, what techniques (if any) are employed by spammers to entice the receiver to purchase a product through spam. It has been said that the porn industry employees the top IT talent. I wonder if the spam industry has some of the top internet marketing talent? Or is it just a numbers game? The only way to know is to discuss it... which does not seem possible. Oh well, lets keep our heads in the sand, fingers tightly in the ears and hum loudly.

Gil -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/16/2003 22:34:49)
quote: The idea was to discuss an internet tool with reason. Base, ignorant accusations that don' t directly accuse someone of disgusting behavior, but imply it are sophmoric at best. No accusation, just an obsevation. No implication intended. Such a strong reaction indicates I hit a nerve though. quote: Emotional -- but you did not explain why spam would cause you to feel immoral. Immoral? Where did you pull that out of? quote: I think I head that quote used by a Junior High teacher I guess " Krypton" doesn' t study history of the 60,s and the " movement" that inspired that quote. Too bad... quote: Is the problem any spam or immoral spam? Any spam! quote: Oh well, lets keep our heads in the sand, fingers tightly in the ears and hum loudly So, any opinion (that' s all these forums are) that doesn' t agree is a " head in the sand" approach?

Doug G -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/16/2003 23:00:18)
quote: It would have been nice to hear what kinds of spam get the best response. Or, what techniques (if any) are employed by spammers to entice the receiver to purchase a product through spam. It has been said that the porn industry employees the top IT talent. I wonder if the spam industry has some of the top internet marketing talent? Or is it just a numbers game? The only way to know is to discuss it... which does not seem possible. Discussing what kinds of spam get the best results as if it were a normal and acceptable marketing tool is what I would consider " tacit approval" of spam. If there was a thread of any length discussing the relative merits of this spam technique vs. that spam tecnnique, I imagine if such a thread were forwarded to CAUCE or a blackhole lister it would cause grief to the proprietors and hosters of this forum. Instant " nest of spammers" reputation. There are other forums on the net where this subject is discussed at great detail, and personally I' d rather spam discussions remained there. Try alt.spam for one.

Thomas Brunt -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/17/2003 10:17:00)
The only subject that I can recall OutFront actively trying to discourage is porn. Many OutFronters are youngsters, and I personally don' t feel good about facilitating the linking to and discussing of porn sites in front of youngsters. I would never censor an OutFront post regarding an effective spam technique, but I would be surprized if such a post would ever fail to meet with strong public criticism by many OutFronters. That criticism may or may not be valid. I believe it would be for the reader of the thread at issue to decide on her or his own. I completely reject the concept that this policy is in any way an approval of any business strategy. I would strongly question the ethcis of any indvidual or group that would try to cause harm to this forum because we allow people to speak their minds. t

Doug G -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/17/2003 12:12:14)
quote: I would strongly question the ethcis of any indvidual or group that would try to cause harm to this forum because we allow people to speak their minds. I agree, but as I' m sure you are aware there are some real zealots in the anti-spam world. quote: I completely reject the concept that this policy is in any way an approval of any business strategy. I do know what I' d think if I wandered in to these forums for the first time and found discussions recommending which CD of email addresses got the best results from a recent spam campaign. Having said that, I' m withdrawing from this discussion.

Thomas Brunt -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/17/2003 12:37:52)
quote: I do know what I' d think if I wandered in to these forums for the first time and found discussions recommending which CD of email addresses got the best results from a recent spam campaign. Hopefully, you would think OutFront is an informative and enjoyable place to be. My guess is that you would see a thread with at least as many posts questioning the ethics and effectiveness of using that kind of marketing tactic as you would posts proclaiming the benifits. If you would deduce that I am a spammer because I allow people to post their own views then I will have to live with that. t

garry -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/17/2003 22:29:22)
Well I am curious as to what works in the " letter" (classed as spam). Golf is not the usual thing that I see in spam. It' s different from all the other products being pushed. Is that why it was beneficial to the company? Now I could probably do with some hair growth, weight loss and viagra, but I just delete. Did people not see the golf email (or others) as " spam" and think it was targetted at them in a more personal way. Lets put the means of transporting the email aside(mass mailing spam), I' m curious about what it is in the content or heading of the email that made people follow it up! Can we maybe digress into content content content of the errr....spam, and maybe there is a technique that may benefit some websites out there to turn and seal a few sales. And Doug, I welcome you back in to continue your input, as all input is valuabe to us all, no matter which side of the fence you sit on. Chers from the Outback

QuoteNotes -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/19/2003 15:13:26)
Regarding the quote, " A client of mine - in that I built his site, I have no input into anything else on an ongoing basis - was persuaded to buy in to amiling list purchase thing, of which I do not have precise details. But he sent out, using a service of some kind, Lord knows how may emails to people who had definitely not opted in to receive mail about what is a very specific service. He did more business in 1 week than he had in the previous year." No doubt HE made money...spammers always do. The question is, how much did his spam cost everyone else who wasn' t interested in it? A year ago, I did a little study and reported it in an article: http://vu.iiaa.net/Lib/Tec/TI/Security/WilsonViruses03.htm At that time, 43% of my email was spam. I just completed a similar study and, now, 70% of my email is spam. As to its profitability, check out some of the numbers cited here: http://vu.iiaa.net/Lib/Tec/TI/Email/WilsonSpamCure.htm One spam client was netting almost a half million dollars a year...and his response rate was 0.00025%! The spammer doing this for him was netting (no pun intended) over $200K a year from this one client. For some more info on this subject and some things you can do, check out the spam related articles here: http://vu.iiaa.net/Lib/Tec/TI/EmailMain.htm - Bill P.S. If you visit the web site above, in keeping with this forum, the entire web site is done with FrontPage. :-)

Yzywyz -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/19/2003 15:18:46)
I like SPAM for breakfast -- eat a few strips with a couple of eggs, or with barbecue sauce on multi-grain bread. MMM![:p] Can' t say that SPAM With Cheese ever did much for me -- except nauseate me.[:' (] I sent in my twenty-four labels and got a SPAM baseball cap and t-shirt.[8D] SPAM is a registered trademark -- there' s a company that could sue a lot of people for defamation and misrepresentation![:o] That aside, I absolutely do not appreciate unsolicited email of a commercial or seedy nature. They absolutely belong in the same classification as unsolicited phone calls. How do you define what email is offensive and what is harmless junk email? I think a lot can be learned from the header (" advertising codes" at the end usually means trouble) and from the originator (I don' t know anyone going by " jones556aqxfh" ). Calling me " friend" surely means there' s a ruse in progress![>:] So-called SPAM is bad mostly for the gullible and for the tech professional -- Mojojojo is right that we expose ourselves to it. Every time we use our email address, especially on our websites, it marks us as a target to spammers. But it also marks us as reliable, earnest, and forthright to our friends and customers![:D]

mc6pack -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/19/2003 15:33:51)
Here is another aspect of spam mail...true story (happening as I write unfortunately) My server uses ' virtual domains' and is a good business - service is good, the control panel is good, price good and he has a good policy for clients (no spamming, no porn ...etc...). A client of his disregarded the policy and sent out spam mail. RoadRunner set up its filters to now include all email used by this server to bounce back or delete. The server company, when they found out about this spammer, kicked him off. However, my email, being I am using RR as my ISP and my domain/webspace is through this server company, is being either bounced back or undelivered. Who knows how much I am not getting or sending...it is not like they send you an email stating that they are not sending your email.... I have notified RR and the server company of the problem. RR says that they are only liable to deliver mail to RR accounts. I also noticed that my parent' s ISP will ONLY deliver email specific to that ISP or one that is hosted by that ISP. Think of the ramifications to those of us that buy our domain name for business...how many times do we host with the same company that we use as our ISP? Spam is dangerous - filter software that ISPs are setting up can backfire. If my problem is not fixed within the next few days I will be moving 3 clients plus myself to another server. ...my forms, cgi stuff....many things will need to be modified. Something to think about...[8\|]...it could happen to anyone of us...[:o][:@][8\|]

enrightd -> RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? (2/19/2003 15:50:59)
quote: Is the problem any spam or immoral spam? Is the solution jack-booted internet nazi' s dictating what can or can' t be done? Is there a middle ground? I think porn spam should be legislated against. Porn may not be illegal in this country, but unsolicited porn should be. That would take some of the spam away.

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