Spam Part 2 - When is Spam not Spam?
Posted by Steven on May 1st, 2006
In this follow up I will be looking into the concept of bulk mailing and how users are lured into signing up for them. There is a tendency on the internet that most users like to sign up for online services or forums and end up receiving more than they bargained for.
Signups are the easiest means of filling your mailbox with unwanted mails. More often than not when downloading free applications like Adobe Reader or Quicktime Media player the user is asked for his or her details, including their e-mail address. A tick box is usually made available to select if you want to receive news from this website (more often than not ticked for you by default). A common mistake that most users are sucked into is the fact that in their rush to download the desired application, they leave any tick boxes with their default settings which would entitle them to receive the much dreaded “community updates” (a very polite way of referring to spam i.e. unless the user actually did want to sign up for it).
Forum signups are more often than not yet another source of unwanted mail. Forums are spaces where people share and discuss their ideas in an open environment. Modern forums also support the facility (optional in certain cases … restricted in others) to have replies to conversations that the users sent posts to, sent to them by mail. This might be acceptable if the users receive maybe one post a day, but there are cases where if each user partakes in more than one conversation and all of these are forwarded to their respective mailboxes, it might be the case that the user might be receiving an unacceptable number of mails per day.
When signing up for services it is imperative that the user informs himself properly about what the sign up entails because you can never be too cautious when divulging private information such as an e-mail address.