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Selling your Inbox Instead of Chocolates?
Qxz86 asks: "I, am an 8th grader at a Tennessee middle school, and on the 21st of February, I was asked to provide names and e-mails and/or street addresses to a company called Schoolmall. The company then distributes them among companies like AT&T and Toshiba. Needless to say, they then spam you legally on account of these solicitations. For every nine that I turn in my school gets $2.25. How do you feel about this?" SchoolMall, a virtual "shopping mall", allows students to purchase items from several large retail chains, and a portion of that purchase (depending on the vendor) goes back to the school. This sounds innocent enough, but I am definitely bothered by the insinuation that they are asking children for email addresses with which someone can Spam unsuspecting targets. Does anyone else have more information on this program?
Spam has no place in public school. Do they need a no spam law in 500 feet so the dare office can go wrestle them to the ground like the stoners behind the gym?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I don't live in that area, but in the past I've determined that one of the charities I donated to sold my name to other charities. That ended my donations to them. If I were in the area I'd make sure that no further nickels or dimes would be forthcoming from me.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
I'm not sure what was being asked or what the poster means by "legal". Sure, it lots of places spam is legal (for now). In those where it is illegal I don't believe that somehow getting an email from a third party without any agreement tracable back to the owner of the email makes it legal.
If the company is asking for people to voluntarily submit their own email address then it's a different story.
Of course as the owner of a few domains I can create email addresses at will and could scam the hell out of this on behalf of my local school.
Note, the privacy policy mentions special rules for children under 13 which is about the age of the typical 8th grader. Coincidence?
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Please, somebody think of the children!
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
25 cents apiece? Wow! That's a lot!
I figure I could make a jillion email addresses on one of the domains I'm squatt^H^H^H^H^H^H reserving, give 'em all to this company, make some quick cash, and then null-route the emails a few days later.
How about the teachers at the beginning of class saying "today's math class is brought to you by Coca Cola."?
Seriously...what more can we do to pollute young minds? Don't some schools still make kids watch that propoganda TV?
-psy
Unsolicited Commercial Email is still Unsolicited if I didn't solicit the company to send it to me .
If someone who knows my email address gives it to a company without my knowledge or consent, it is still unsolicited business email.
This is called a referral in the business world. It is probably an attempt to get around spam legislation in certian states, since a referral is the beginning of a business relationship.
The problem now is that *any* business could claim that my address was 'referred' to them, and then say that to protection the privacy of their clients they won't tell me who or when I was referred.
Since we live in an 'innocent until proven guilty' country the burden would be on me to prove that no one referred me.
So existing spam legislation should be changed assumiong that referrals are valid business relationships:
If a third party provides a referral to a business to be contacted via email, with whom the business does not have a prior relationship, the business is allowed to send not more than 1 email to the target, and that email must contain the verified name and email address, and claimed relationship of the person that referred the target. In addition, no person shall refer more than 10 people in one day. The business must obtain and verify the referrer's full name, address and phone number, and keep these on file, providing them to law enforcement officers on warrant or subpeona. The target may also request this information, which must be provided within 3 business days without warrant.
If the referrer indeed has a pre-existing relationship with the target, then he can have no reason to keep his identity, address and phone numbers secret. Furthermore, personal referrals generally don't result in millions of email addresses at a time. 10 a day is a safe limit.
Sure, there are loopholes, but I believe that in a capitalist society referrals are a valid source of business, and while I'd rather hear about the business from a friend, who gets the reward when I tell the company who referred me, I can see valid situations where the friend has the business contact me. Just not many of them.
There isn't much of a difference between a friend selling my email address, and referring me with a bonus if I buy something. Since email addresses aren't considered property then we'd have a hard time pushing that as the case.
-Adam
I don't like this one little bit. People I know turning in my address for $$$? That's sneaky and underhanded. I think spam has gone far enough. I do beleive it is the #1 threat on the internet right now. Marketing people need to find another way to solicit me.
- Like maybe get a giant size board and put it next to freeways and such. People providing such services could bill to have people put up their ads. We can call it the "billboard".
- purchase time on television sets in between shows or during a break time. During these breaks, commercial advertisers could show their wares. We could call these "commercial breaks".
There's lots of ways to target me. But cramming 45+messages a day in my inbox is dammed annoying! If people checked their postal mailboxes everyday and got 45 junk emails there'd certainly be a lot more done about it at the governemnt level do'nt ya think? Maybe if the governement charged $0.10 tax per commercial email that went out spammers wouldn't be so happy to have their "45 million email opt-in lists". That would come out to $4.5 million. I'm sure that would get the spammers to trim the fat out of their lists.-or-
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Hmmm ... for each email address you give to this 'company', presumably from willing recipients of their SPAM (the theory that this SPAM becomes legal because the email owner has granted you their approval) you get a quarter.
... the school only gets about 5% or 10% ... maybe 25% of the total amount spent. The local citizens need to spend $30,000 for the school to gather up $3,000 to send the kids to camp or whatever.
... odds are you will make a LOT more money and he gets no more spam out of the deal.
You are getting closer and closer to what I envision as the perfect fund-raiser. In fact you only need to go one more step and you are there.
What is the problem with current fund raisers, I suggest? The cost to benefit ratio. Those church catalogs that are full of popcorn, stained glass ornaments, chocolate covered nuts, even World's Finest Chocolate Covered Almonds (which I LOVE, btw)
I always wish when the fundys come to my cube there was simply a 'Donate $3 to the cause' box, maybe I could get a nice laser printed black and white certificate of 'Good Person' or something instead of buying a 10 pound box of popcorn or a $38 glass trinket with a candle in it. If 100% of that $3 went to the cause it would be a LOT easier than convincing me to spend $30 - $60 on stuff I don't want or need.
Maybe if you explained to the adults that you had some company that will give you 25 cents for each email address and the company gets to spam them, or the adult can give you whatever change he has in his pocket and you will gleefully go away and apply whatever he donates to your cause
Summer is coming. Want to make a TRUCKLOAD of cash for your cause? Tell the manager at WalMart you want to hold a fund raiser car wash in their parking lot. A lot of them will donate all the supplies and space in their parking lot, and some will actually match whatever you guys earn in the course of the car wash. Don't price it, accept 'donations' and be sure people know what the fund raiser is for (be specific.) You would have to sell a bunch of email addresses to match the $5 I will give you to wash my car.
No joke.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Only do it if the email addresses you send to them are disposable. That means they aren't email addreses anyone uses for anything important. When you hit your friends up for one, don't use the main one. Ask them to register a new hotmail account and use THAT one.
It may be that SchoolMall is smarter than they sound and they will disallow just email addresses, especially if they come from hotmail or yahoo where they can be created easily. In that case, I will donate to you as many fake email addresses as you desire. And if I'm lucky, maybe you'll give me a receipt when SchoolMall makes the donation, so I can deduct it on my taxes, right? ^_^
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
(BTW - I checked out SchoolMall, seems that 2.5% is about the average. 40% is for 'some magazines' which means Vibe or something nobody you know is going to buy.)
Go to WalMart. Buy or shoplift a half dozen of those door peep hole things ( http://www.safetycentral.com/doorviewpeek.html ) for like $2 apiece, get a measuring tape or some string so you can find the center of some random doors, get some adult to go with you door to door and offer to install them in the door, say that if they had one they would have known you were coming and not answered the door. Sell them for $5 to $7 with 100% of the proceeds (profits, which is like $5 apiece if you paid $2 for them, or $7 apiece if you shoplifted them in the first place.) Do a good job so they will refer you to their friends.
This is called 'Value Added Reselling' and it is something people actually appreciate, understand, and respect. It is way different than 'charity' in that people are getting value for their money, much like the car wash mentioned above.
Don't beg, don't scam, don't steal (well except for the five finger discount on the door peepholes from WalMart, consider it their donation to the cause) - earn what you need in an honorable fashion and everybody wins.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
2. Hire geek to write bot to submit addresses 20 at a time to schoolmall
3. Non-profit PROFIT!
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
> ...on the 21st of February, I was asked to
> provide names and e-mails and/or street addresses > to a company called Schoolmall.
Asked by _who_? Your teacher? If so, tell your parents and tell them to raise holy hell with the school board. If you were approached directly by Schoolmall I suggest that you have your parents contact your state attorney general about taking legal action against them.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Would Schoolmall be held responsible if one of those companies they sold addresses to sent emails with explicit content to a minor?
I have found there are just two ways to go.
It all comes down to livin' fast or dyin' slow. -REK, Jr.