use of emails

[andyede]

I know this is long but please take the time to read all opinions are welcome as this is not a technical question more a question of etiquette. A situation recently arose between a friend of mine and a webmaster of another site about spam email.

I would be greatful if anyone would be willing to put their views on the subject forward.

My friend runs a website selling components for stop motion animation. he has for the past 3 years or so saved any emails he has receieved related to animation in a folder. he recently relaunched the site and obviously wanted to send out a mailing list to publicise this event. He used a program i wrote to extract email addresses from text files to gather all the email addresses in this folder and compile a mailing list. This was not the programs initial intent, it was ment for counting unique email addresses but the file it saves the seen emails addresses to happens to be a very nice list of the addreses. Now i consider this to be a resonible way to gather emails since these email addresses have all been sent to my friend. And the logic that these email addresses will be of people that have a high chance of being interested or related to animation.

Now the problem is....one of these emails saved by my friend was from the webmaster of another site informing people of an email address change. this email was also 'cc'ed to many other people including some of his friends and family. ofcourse these email addresses have been saved to the new mailing list and have received the new publicity email from my friend.

I receieve spam mail every day of the week but simply accept that it is something we have to live with. however when this webmasters sister has forwarded him this email he has seen that it has gone to many people on his own mailing list and has made the assumption that my friend has HACKED his personal computer to gain email addresses to sent promotional mail to.

this webmaster has then decided to go onto my friends site and spam both the guest book and forum with this acusation as well as linking to a page on his own site saying the same thing.

The question of sending out spam is not in question as it obviously was (whether targeted or not) however I consider his reaction to be a grossly unnessesary response to this situation when this could have been handled privatly and professinally. I also think that this sort of behaviour is damaging to the whole web community.

I don't however think that my opinion is nessesarily correct as i am in a bias situation. I would be very interested in some other people opinions on this.

Any replies greatly welcomed

[chilipie]

Hmmmm...

If the email your friend sent clearly had an "unsubscribe" link on it, then even if it is considered Spam, at least he gave them some way to stop more emails coming. I think the webmaster of that site is childish - but then on the other hand, your friend got emails that the webmaster may have promised not to sell to people - so other guys on the webmaster's mailing list may now have lost faith in him.

[mcdougals4all]

Now the problem is....one of these emails saved by my friend was from the webmaster of another site informing people of an email address change. this email was also 'cc'ed to many other people including some of his friends and family.

I'd say your friend is not helping the reputation of his business by sending unsolicited emails, whether intentional or not. Unless the recipients have opted in or made other direct contact to request such information it's still spam.

On the other hand, the webmaster who CC'd all his friends and family should know better. By the time such an email has been forwarded through a few offices it can contain hundreds of email addresses just waiting to be harvested.

That being said, this is probably better suited for General Web Building

[Skyzyx]

Well, working in the email marketing industry, I can tell you that the CAN-SPAM legislation of 2003 says that if the email is promotional (goal is a sale of some sort), then (A) the sender MUST list the physical address of the sender, (B) the sender MUST include some sort of working unsubscribe mechanism, (C) the sender MUST honor any and all unsubscribe requests, and (D) you may NOT email anyone who has not opted-in to receiving such promotions.

If the email is purely informational (i.e. "You're already using our software, and we've just released version 5.23 of our software which contains many highly recommended security fixes..."), then you ARE ALLOWED to send emails to people where you DO have their email address, but HAVE NOT opted-in to any marketing, granted that A from above still applies (unsub links are not required for people who aren't even signed up for promotions anyways).

The last part is simply email list hygeine... which your friend didn't do. It's not illegal, but you can end up with some very pissed-off people, as in this case. Granted the retaliation was quite childish, but had your friend taken the time to go through and check the messages first before extracting the email addresses, this could have been avoided.

Now, your friend needs to understand that if the email was promotional, then he is in violation of federal law, and can actually be prosecuted if he is unwilling to clean up his act. If the email was purely informational, then he was within the confines of the law, and only has to worry about the mess that he created by not scrutinizing his list as closely as he should have.

[raf]

for me, your mail is spam. these people never formaly agreed to receive promotional mail. it's not because they once mailed your friend, or because they were a CC in a mail to your friend, or because they might be intrested, that you should mail them ...

To compose a maillist, there is just one acceptable method: have the users check a box on a website or so.

Unsubscribelinks on unsollicited mail are pointless. Noone will click them (i hope), because then the spammer knows that the emailadress is valid an still in use.

About the hysterical webmaster: he's clearly an idiot. It is he, who has disclosed the emailadresses. He should have put all the emailadresses in BC instead of CC (as should you, if you don't send everyone a seperate mail). I would be furious if i would receive such a mail, and see that my emailadress is leaked to all other receivers.

[andyede]

thanks for your replys guys. and i agree with the forum change.

I agree with all of you that this was spam. I don't contest this and i wouldn't have done it myself. And i'm very sure that my friend regrets what has happened now he knows that someone has had a problem with it and would have been willing to make a full and public appology. The gripe i have with this is the way he has reacted to the situation. I am getting very fed up with this guy actually. he is absolutly insistant even now that we had stolen these email addresses. i have tried to tell him (as is my opinion) that his lack of security GAVE them to us but he doesn't seem to apritiate this. The emails the he sent with all the addresses on them weren't even CCed, the addresses were in the TO field and palinly visible. To a certain extent i can understand why but at the end of the day he should admit some resposibility for this.

I have seen no excuse what so ever for making this as public as it has been when it was so completley unfounded. I also consider some of the things he has said to be not only offensive but liable. And i quote him from another forum he has posted in "As soon as someone wrongs me, I will make it a point to show people the truth. Stealing is one of Andy's traits - do not do business with him."

I think this is total unreasonable and vindictive and beleive that statment in itself deserves a public appology.

If anyone is interested to see how this has developed i am comunicating with him by this forum http://www.stopmotionanimation.com/dc/dcboard.php#2458

i feel like i'm going on abit of a personal crusade with this but i really do have an objection with the outsome of this situation.

[AaronW]

HE collected the addresses in the first place. I'd guess that only HE has the right to send e-mails to those people. Your friend essentially acted as a spambot by harvesting links which were not freely given to him. Obviously the guy's reaction was poor, but your friend is at fault too. Make your own opt-in mailing list, and make it unsubscribeable without simultaneously subscribing to even more lists...

There are far better ways to advertise to people. Annoying the majority with hopes to please a very small minority is a very dumb way to market, in my opinion.

[andyede]

well i don't think 'annoying the majority with hopes to please a very small minority' fuly applies to this case. As i said these addresses have been harvested from comunications relating to the subject matter in hand. I would have though in this case it is more a matter of interesting the majority and unfortunatly and unintentially annoying the minority. As for the subject of where the emails come from. My personal opinion is that there is nothing wrong with this kind of harvesting it is simply discurtious to do it.

Even so i don't see how this entitles anyone to make potentially damaging comments and insults in return.