Are You In Or Out: Learn The Difference
Between Spam And Opt-In

Contributed by Jay Schroyer

If you’re like me, when you get home from work each day, you have to spend a couple of minutes sorting the mail. I estimate that I receive anywhere from five to ten unsolicited credit card offers per week. And I can tell you where they all end up: right into the trash bin. Just like snail mail, your e-mail can become overrun with unsolicited offers for numerous services some of which you would never even dream of using. How do these people get your address and why are they sending you this stuff?

Most of these addresses are culled by companies who sell them to marketing companies. Lets say you own an online hat store and you want to get the word out that you sell only the finest hats on the Web. You could contact a marketing service who would provide you with a list of names and e-mail addresses. Generally, these names are bought from other sources like an actual mailing list for an upscale haberdashery or other store that sells hats. At least if you receive this e-mail, there’s a chance that you actually do care about hats and would be interested in such a site. However, some unscrupulous marketing firms will sell any and all names and addresses that they can get a hold of. Thus, you end up with an endless string of e-mails offering you low-priced prescription medication or other inappropriate offers in your mailbox everyday.

Your address can also be snagged when you visit certain sites. Specially-written programs analyze users of certain web addresses and learn your e-mail address. This is added to a list that is sold to other companies who then send out massive bulk mailings of marketing e-mails. Perhaps you’ve downloaded a shareware or freeware program lately and the only “cost” of the program was to provide some registration information like your name, age, gender, and valid e-mail address. Next thing you know, you are receiving all sorts of spam.

Is there any hope to prevent spam? An important thing to learn is how to differentiate between spam and opt-in e-mails.

Opt-in
An opt-in is when you specifically contact a web site or request to be placed on a companies e-mail list. For example, you may want Microsoft to send you an e-mail whenever a new version of Windows® is released. You are specifically requesting this information be sent to you. There are many opt-ins available from all sorts of companies including their e-newsletters, special offers, and upcoming events. You often have the choice when you join a web site to decide if you would like to receive e-mails from their service. Nowadays, banks, credit cards, magazine subscriptions, and even retail sites like Amazon® and eBay® offer this service. You may want to take a look at the address sharing policy of the companies that you opt-in. Some state right in the fine print that they do share your address with other companies who feature similar services. If this is the case, be prepared to receive mail that you didn’t ask for.

Spam
Spam is when you most definitely did not ask a web site to send you an e-mail. Often, your address is sold to these companies by a marketing service and is collected via your web surfing, completed questionnaires and registrations, or by legitimate services that you have opted-in to, but share their addresses with other companies. In most cases, there is no way to stop these e-mails. If you attempt to e-mail them back with an address removal request, you will find that the address no longer exists. If the spam really is a legit company, they may offer a link at the bottom of the e-mail that you can access to remove your name from their list, but for the most part, it’s best to mark the message as spam so that your e-mail provider can automatically place it into your spam or bulk folder. I generally don’t open spam especially if I don’t recognize the address of the sender. Most e-mail programs scan incoming e-mails for viruses and will bounce them or quarantine them, but if one should get through and you access it, it could mean some trouble for your computer.

Hopefully the day will come when the Internet will offer an opt-out list just like the one that keeps telemarketers at bay. But with spam senders able to delete their sending address seconds after sending a mass emailing, it is very hard to trace and stop these spammers. If the spam mail contains the company’s web site address and you simply do not want to receive anymore mail from this site, it may be worth your time to drop into the web site and see if there is a contact link. You can then ask to be removed from their mailing list. If it continues, you may want to check out some of the government web pages concerning spam control to see if there is any course of action that you can take. Most spam is harmless, but there are some out there that you would rather not receive. If you’re not receiving as a result of an opt-in, you have every right to demand that they stop sending it.

Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation, registered in the U.S. and other countries. Amazon is a registered trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. eBay is a trademark of eBay, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

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