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Spam King Living High in the Bayou

Posted by michael on from the spam-and-eggs-and-spam dept.

mikey573 writes "Connecticut's main newspaper, The Hartford Courant, decided to bring the issue of spam to the forefront with a top headline front page story Spam King Living High In The Bayou in its Sunday print edition. The article goes into describing the spam marketing company "Opt-In Marketing Services". The article goes too much into glorifying one person's success with spam, while failing to underscore the potential problems he has caused for others."

2 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. May be hated, but it works.. by josh+crawley · · Score: 1, Troll

    C'mon. Everybody hates spam. Even the slashdot trolls posted the obligatory net.abuse news group. Thing is, why EXACTLY is he rich?

    1: He accepts jobs that ONLY pay 1000$ or more. Even the herbal stuff gets into this bracket.
    2: Percentage cut on people who buy goods.

    Well, even though people hate it, IT MAKES MONEY. I dont care what it is: drugs, pop, cd's, DVD's, equipment... People do what makes money. Evidently spam makes a lot, even though the heavy equipment required to send it.

    If he wants to spend the money to send spam, let him. I see banning it as against the first amendment (speech). However, that doesnt stop ISP's putting spam filters (and low transfer speeds). My ISP even has procmail, so I can make my own.

  2. Spam, as a concept, isn't evil. The method is. by wackybrit · · Score: 1, Troll

    This article makes some good points, and so does the guy that runs that company. He says that advertising is everywhere, so why are people getting so pissy about it when it's in e-mail? Good point, I say. We're often handed crap in the street, forced to digest TV ads, or have to face hundreds of billboards, yet we don't whine as much as when we get some e-mail ads. Why?

    Scelson sees a big difference between what he does - which he considers proper e-mail marketing - and indiscriminate, anonymous e-mail advertising - which he regards as true spam.

    Right again. Getting ads in your e-mail is not, as a concept, bad. I mean, we've all bought something that we've seen in an advert, right? The whole concept of advertising is not just an evil scheme, it's one that customers can find just as useful as the businesses. We need to learn about new deals, and it helps us shop around.

    "I've gone into newsgroups and fought to prove that spam can be done right," Scelson says.

    This brings me to my main point. Currently, 90% of the spam I receive is 'done wrong'. It's marked up with irrelevant subject lines designed to TRICK me into opening them (things like 'Re: that thing you wanted' or 'Your account is overdue!').

    If we're going to have e-mail ads, let the spammers at least 'do it right'. We want all ads to have subjects starting with 'COMM:', 'AD:' or similar, so that we can filter them out or into a different folder if we want to. And then, we want relevant subjects that sell to us!

    I mean, come on, if I got a great 0% APR credit card offer in as 'AD: Visa 0% APR Offer from SomeCardCo', I might well be interested! But not if it looks like a scam or some cheesey trick mailer to harvest e-mail addresses.

    Ads should also be targeted by location. I live in the UK, and if I receive ads for US credit card companies, what bloody good is that!? Sell me things I want, and that I can buy!

    So, I don't think spam, as a concept, is evil.. just the way it's currently sent is.

    --
    mogorific carpentry experiments