Slashdot Mirror
How To Convince My Boss Not To Spam?
An anonymous reader writes "The small travel agent that I work for recently received an email from one of our competitors with several thousand of their potential customers in the 'To:' and 'Cc:' fields. My boss now wants to use these addresses to send unsolicited advertisements. I would like to convince him not to do this, as I believe that this practice is morally wrong and legally dubious. However, morals don't go very far in the business world, so I'm asking Slashdot: what business-oriented arguments can I use to dissuade my boss from spamming?"
I reckon you've got a few options:
Ok, so you're dealing with a sales-focussed person here, the only one likely to carry any weight is going to be last one and even then, you may be onto a losing streak. Assuming this person controls your pay packet, you're either going to have to put up a token resistance and then keep your mouth shut; or perhaps if you have the option, consider whether you want to be working for someone like that...
sad, but true.
Explain that sending spam might put your email server on the Spamhaus blacklist, OR pissing of your provider, so you cannot send email again to existing clients.
... is the keyword here. Companies spend millions on lawyers, legal insurances and the like. Explain to him that what he is doing could be a legal risk.
Simply tell him that, usually, spam is filtered and deleted automatically. Once he sent a sufficiently large amount of spam, the filter will filter away the legitimate e-mails too.
Short of actual legal arguments (in which case ask a lawyer), there is no real argument against it.
Its probably safe to assume all of those potential customers are not looking for a new, erm, provider (?). If this is the case, then pissing them off by spamming them results in no real loss, and any of those stupid potential customers that actually listens to the spam and considers your company is a potential gain. So, at the end of the day, there is nothing to lose, and much to possibly gain.
Somehow, I don't think any argument you make is going to convince your boss.
Get his home email address
Enter it here (don't visit from work, do it from a web cafe and behind 7 proxies)
http://www.spamyourenemies.com/
After a while he'll go off the idea. You might want to recommend Thunderbird to him.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
...then it's up to your boss. If he won't listen and you REALLY don't like it, start looking for another job. However make sure it's important enough to give your job up over. If morals are important to you I think you'll find that no matter what job you do there are going to be aspects of it you aren't comfortable with. At the end of the day you have to be sure you can live with yourself.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Subscribe him to some spamming sites. And shut down his spam filter. Spammers typically have small dicks, so maybe he could use some "medicine"
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
Here's some of the stuff that's likely to happen to your company if it sends those messages:
* Your mail server will be added to blacklists. Legitimate messages you send later may disappear with no indication that they have done so, causing endless frustration and possibly lost money.
* Complaints may reach your web site's hosting provider, who may take it offline. Seriously: this happened to one of my clients once. This does happen.
* Some recipients are likely to be annoyed and may decide to never do business with your company. The long-term costs of this could be significant.
* Depending on where you're based, this could be illegal under either protection of privacy laws (e.g. the UK's Data Protection Act) or anti-spam laws (e.g. several state laws in the U.S.). Your company may receive a hefty fine because of it.
...and the community will provide millions of very convincing reasons.
Send a notice to all the email addresses with a notice informing them that your competitor has been disclosing their email address in all the emails they send out.
A small signature indicating who you are, and a link to your website would be enough to bring some of them to you.
This could be considered a public-service to those people.
It also could be a trap and some of those email address could be honey pots with the hope that you send email to them and get yourself put on the spam lists.
Stealing your competitor's customers is what capitalism is.
You need to separate your hate of spam from the realities of business:
Ethical, kind people go bankrupt.
I have my own company, and if this happened to me I would be working this gift from God HARD.
So, at the risk of blowing my karma for the next 200 years:
Either do the job or quit.
Seriously. You got hired to do his bidding, if he wants to spam let him reap the consequences, make careful note of your objections. Then also admit you're a tool.
And if you can't live with that then grow some backbone and quit. There has to be other employment for someone with your skills.
MP3 Search Engine
Simply explain to him the returns on investment on two scenarios:
1 / 0,5% return on a spam campaign, with all the legal problems he might encounter
2 / Possible large settlement when he sues his competitor for spamming him
Ok, I never said I had a moral solution....
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Look into this website: http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/canspam.html
You may file a complaint here: http://esupport.fcc.gov/complaints.htm
Honestly, I would say that nobody in their right mind buys expensive travel services from unsolicited mailings.
Why should we help your business do better? if you're destined to fail because of poor ethical and legal practices then why should we slow your demise?
If you tell your boss it's illegal to send unsolicited advertisements and he brushes you off, find a new employer:). That's probably not all he's capable of doing. Call me paranoid, but I do speak from experience.
Does your company sell v1agra or c1alis? Or the organic forms of these, or the "legit" ones from Canada? Then its green light. Otherwise, your company will be equated with these companies.
The dreaded I for one will not do business with Amazon, Buy.com and several minor companies specifically because I have received unsolicited (aka "partner") spam from them. I disapprove of the practice and will pay a couple of dollars to avoid companies who engage in it.
I would say the best argument against spamming is that it damages the brand. Sales reps can proudly claim that they are above their competitors in that "we do not spam."
It might be a better angle to subtly reveal that your competitor has leaked private information and that your company chose to take the high road by discarding it.
Also, don't die on this cross. Companies spam, as a rule.
FairTax baby!
Tell them it would give your travel agency a bad rep. No one reads spam these days and would most likely piss them off. Which does not go good for business.
You could also say that this could be a setup on part of your competitor to see how you would act in such a morally damning area. Maybe they would base their own future actions based on this. Think about it: Who gives To and CC fields and email's a copy to their competitors. ITS A TRAP (you may not believe it but to convince your boss you may have to do that)
I've not participated in business operations involving high volume email. But even as a private individual, I've gotten in hot water before when I've sent out messages to large a number of recipients. Some of my intended (consenting) targets have reported my stuff ending up in their Spam folder. As such, you may convince your boss that it would hurt his business goals in the long run as he risk getting "black listed". Maybe even to the point that legitimate communication gets denied by filtering software that has been trained through exposure to the business's email address.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
So, ehmm, would you tell us a little more about your business so we all know who to avoid?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
I do not know what firm you are working for, but really well established companies do not spam. Tell your boss that he puts himself in the same league as Viagra sellers and email scammers.
Explain to him that he could make more money by blackmailing the competitor which sent him the addresses.
I'm not an expert when it comes to email marketing, but I have had some experience with it before... To my knowledge, any credible mass-mail service will send the emails so that it's addressed to a single person (per email). If they are dumb enough to expose all of their clients in the TO and CC fields, it seems like they're asking for trouble. Of course, this may not solve for the moral dilemma, but it's not like your boss is going out of his way and buying a list of email leads (which is ridiculous); they're all right there for the picking! They only argument I can think of is telling him to research the target prospects and send mail based upon that.. then it's not really unsolicited - more like cold calling. A lot of people don't take into consideration that some email *is* targeted, and it really is no different than picking up the phone and calling the customer directly, or sending them something by mail... While cold calling is becoming more and more obsolete in today's business environment, doing some research and choosing some leads isn't really all that bad - especially when your competitor is kind enough to do some of the leg work for you.
the way you describe your boss currently is small in a business sense, most companies or individuals trying to work their way up do so by being personal and polite to their customers to make them happy. thus spreading by word of mouth "hey that guy did right by me he is a stand up person i recommend him" or (insert equally lame example here).
if he blanket emails people he may get new customers but he did not get them in a polite manner (and perhaps not the most ethical way either). if his current customers find out that he spams for business he may loose customers in the long run.
1. It's an abuse of personal data, since the owner of that data (the individual) did not opt in. In many countries (particularly the UK) this is illegal and can land you in a lot of trouble.
2. If you're a small company, your reputation is going to be worth a lot more than one or two customers who may answer your email. Doing something that's at worst illegal and and at best irritating is hardly going to help your reputation.
3. Business ethos and ethics matter. As a consumer, I often know that dealing with a small company could cost slightly more than buying from a large one with economies of scale. However, I may feel it is worth it if the service is better or if I identify positively with the company. I have broken off relations in the past with companies that marketed too aggressively. This is entirely rational behaviour and not something limited to techies who "get" spam and are over-protective of their inboxes.
Cheers,
Martin
Author of `Professional Plone Development`, available from Packt Publishing.
Hire spamming agency to spam your potential customers on behalf of your competitors. Compare your sales figures with your competitors at the end of a quarter. There you've solid proof to convince your boss.
Sorry, I couldn't resist, it's so funny.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
Quit your job and fine a decent boss.
Privacy is terrorism.
if spamhaus is working, you won't need to know.
Perhaps a cost/benefit analysis with pie chart, here's the cost of sending out these e-mails, here's the number of folks that the e-mail will bounce from, here's the number of folks that will block us, here's the number of folks that will report us and this tiny little point here is the number of people that will continue to shop with us.
I find your argument interesting, and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter. Care to tell us your email address? :)
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There is very little you can do other then point out how it's illegal (if it is in your country) and or how it is morally wrong; which as it sounds isn't a problem with your employer. Since he was all ready signed up for their mailing list specifically to undermine any sales/services etc they might have to offer this is just another way for them to try taking business away from them.
Contact your ISP and ask them what their policy about sending spam which will most likely be that they do not allow it, and tell the boss that the ISP will cut service if you try it. As long as he will lose money it might keep him from going though with it.
TruePunk | Games
And is the right choice, if done smoothly. Don't mass email. Investigate each contact send a personalized note targeted at them and their business.
Use the information, just don't abuse it. Spam is quick and dirty, but a poor substitute for the elbow grease of real salesmanship.
They'll do anything, including "spoofing" your boss to think they accidently released all that info.
They'll wait a bit and then contact them while apologizing that some scum/lower tier agency was scamming their customers/potential customers and we've got a great deal to make.
Please educate your friends and family that if it involves TV/Internet/FREEPLAYSTATION/XBOX/52HIGHDEFINITIONTV13724ONYOURFM.FREE.PLAY.RADIO.ORG.NET.COM
It isn't.
Send it from his email account so he'll get all the bounces - or set up the sending account to forward all mail received to his account.
Better yet, "prune" the list to remove all the innocent people, and add nothing but bogus email addresses so every single one will bounce (write a script to check for domains based on 3-4 dictionary words but that return no valid authoritative NS records).
No one will get harmed, 'cept your ISP will be highly annoyed (perhaps tip them off, or have one of those spam emails come to your own little anonymous account, which you can forward to the ISP). The ISP will no doubt give your boss a nice call, and he'll get all the bounces.
Oh, and line up a job at a place with above board business practices.
That's a bit extremist, isn't it? You *can* try convincing people that you're right, instead of just being a tool.
But if you have to, quit. I mean, think of the consequences. Would YOU want a company like, say, SCO on your resume?
SPAM
Let him feel the consequences![insert lame sig here]
My company has a variety of contact lists, and if any of them were to "leak", by CC etc, I'd start getting emails on addresses that *look* like real people but are in fact aliases for me.
If you boss spams like this, there exists the possibility that the other firm have taken this elementary precaution, which may be anything from seriously embarrassing to legally expensive.
Dominic Connor,Quant Headhunter
Hey, if it was me, I would hit reply all and say something short and simple with my business in the footer.
It is initially an attractive option to mail all the customers on the list - the problem with that is, as has been mentioned before, that they can get upset, you may be blacklisted, etc.
For this reason the following advice seems clear and obvious:
1. Hire a third-party emailer to send the advertisements from a separate location. That way, your company will not be on the black list.
2. Put in the "Sent from" field, your competitor's email address. That way any complaints will only reach them. This is justified because they started spamming in the first place.
3. For the actual advertisement as well however, to avoid complaints, you should make a mail that imitates your competitor's website, but where the true supplier and owner of the bank account is actually yourself. In this way you will be supplying the customers, but they would direct any complaints to your competitor, which is justified per 2.
If you go down this route then overall success is guaranteed.
Give him "permission marketing" from Seth Godin to read. (See http://www.sethgodin.com/permission/) Explains how much he'll hurt himself spamming.
Spam them all and let god sort them out!
If you cannot beat them then join them!
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
this would seriously impact his brand's value. Negatively. Very.
Reformulate the problem into the sexual / romantic arena. Imagine a guy who asks every single woman he meets "hey baby, nice ass, want to go back to my place?" That sort of thing reeks of desperation as well as lack of confidence, and even if used on hundreds or thousands of women the result is usually 100% failure. In the rare event of success the result is more likely to be ... a less than satisfactory arrangement (e.g. ugly woman, one night stand, STDs, etc.) Additionally, it insults and turns off a huge number of potentially otherwise interested women.
Whereas being more selective in potential romantic partners, using a more measured and sophisticated approach to communication (flirting, chatting, slowly moving to the right level of familiarity at the right time, being willing to back off when necessary, etc.), and presenting a better and more confident image tends to result in higher success rates with more desirable partners, even though it takes more effort.
The same is the case for business. With spam, at best you get some tiny percentage of customers with 0 loyalty whatsoever while building up a huge mountain of ill-will with an enormous number of potential customers. Whereas more socially sophisticated methods of communicating and treating potential customers has a higher chance of success, has a higher chance of creating more profitable and worthwhile customers, has a higher chance of creating customers who have such a positive view of your company and your services that they will tell their friends (doing your advertising and sales work for you), and even in the event of a "missed sale" will still leave the customer with a positive image of your company and product and will leave open the opportunity for that person to become a future customer if they change their mind or develop new needs.
Ask him how he deals with other people in person and make him see that the same reasons he doesn't use lame mass-spam techniques in real life are applicable online, even with strangers.
and you'll get a reward.
If you really must, point out that there is the possibility.
Your scheme is the following:
1. I think X is morally wrong.
2. I try to find the arguments which could justify me thinking that X is wrong.
3. Selectively use these arguments to convince others about my original position.
Instead, you should try:
1. I have the hunch that X is morally wrong.
2. I try to find arguments pro and contra, and decide on their basis whether I was initially right or wrong.
3. Take action on the basis of the result of my deliberation in step 2, instead of sticking to my hunch in step 1.
Attitudes make the difference between Space and Time: we want to MAX our temporal, and MIN our spatial extension.
We are not talking about sending v1agr@ ads to random addresses, it's legitimate, well targeted advertisement to people that are likely to need the products that they are selling.
Just do it as you would start any selling, send them each an individual email telling them of your offerings and be sure to have a working email address as sender (sales@yourcompany.com). If you really are serious about making the sales, have an intern look up the phone number of the people you are writing to and call them afterwards.
If the competitor didn't want to lose his clients, he shouldn't be stupid enough to spread their contact information around.
Olli
The fact that he is contacting people that haven't supplied their details to your business is most likely the biggest "legal" barrier he will have. Most countries legislation or trading practices should outline this provision, or rather outline that unsolicited commercial email is SPAM and is a reportable/punishable offence. Unsolicited being the key in this scenario.
In Australia at least he'd be up for a fine in the tens of thousands of dollars range, possibly more if he chose not to make use of an unsubscribe link etc.
The response rate to this sort of advertising is extremely low. He'll be lucky to get a single response, thus making it not worth the time to compose an email.
Most people react badly to unsolicited emailed advertisements. It is likely that some of these people are already customers or potential customers. This will dissuade them from choosing your company in the future.
If any customers are in the EU, you may have a data protection liability. Even if you don't, at least some people will respond requesting to be removed from the mailing list, which is something that will have to be dealt with.
It's very likely to be against the terms and conditions of your ISP.
It is possible that you will be blacklisted by the recipients ISPs (unlikely if he does this once)
There may be some legal ramifications for taking advantage of an obvious mistake by the other company. Even just a baseless legal threat would take time and money to deal with.
And if I had any business with your company, that would be the end of it.
You would get reported for spamming; if it continued, you would get sued, and my business would go elsewhere.
Then again, I wouldn't do business with the original moron sending all the contacts in the CC: field either.
Ethical or at least semi-ethical behaviour can give you an advantage here.
Someone suggested, for instance, replying to everyone (for good measure, put them in the BCC: field) and making a relatively subtle ad out of it.
I would actually make it a little spam lecture, explaining why this should never be done, and directly letting the competitor know that I have a list of his potential customers which I am not going to spam further. With apologies to everyone reading this as an unsolicited message, but it's an important matter and they will not hear from me again anyway.
Make it all sound not only intelligent, but funny too, and you'll make people laugh, and thus likely to read it through. Some may then decide to click on the link in your signature or simply reply. If they do, it is them contacting you.
I've done it a few times, when an occasional moronic spammer sent me and a hundred other people a shady MLM business offer. I analyzed the hell out of it, cussed at him just because he was a moron, explained every single detail, including who he worked for though he conveniently failed to mention it (a sthey always do), and it got me a few laughs. People who were bothered by the mail were encouraged at the very beginning to delete it immediately, so I'm fairly sure I had not made a pest out of myself.
Of course, it was private mail, so no business contacts resulted from it. In business mail, kindly do refrain from cussing.
You can exploit your competitions's mistakes and weaknesses. It's part of doing business.
Employing the same strategy that youu found to be their weakness is simply moronic.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Your advice is unethical, jacquesm.
As an employee, a person has a contractual obligation to perform all reasonable tasks as set out in the employment contract. In addition, every member of society has a moral/social obligation (and very possibly a legal obligation (duty of care)) to ensure that they take reasonable measures to ensure that their colleagues (which includes their supervisors) do not expose the company to unreasonable risk nor act in an illegal or unethical manner.
By advising the OP to shaddup and lump it, you're advising an unethical course of action.
I think the OP has done the right thing by consulting the peer group for advice. That advice seems to be "Present your boss with a list of all the reasons against spamming and suggest the plan is cancelled." By doing so the OP would A. be acting responsibly and ethically and B. covering their backside in case the boss foolishly goes ahead with the plan.
Why can't we let people believe whatever they like? It's not like a little religion has ever hurt anyone.
The things you see when you don't have any mod points :-(
Anyway Absolutely spot on, a competitors mailing list is marketing golddust, you could probably get a lot of sales data without too much hassle, emails going to the same company would be a good target indicator. Google API searching with the email domain could winnow out the people with websites (
It's not really a question of spam at all, it's a question of business ethics.
Imagine this happened in 1978, not 2008, and your competitor snail-mailed you (read: your employer) his client address list. Would it be ethical for you to contact these accidentally-obtained leads and try to persuade them to switch their business?
At the risk of being modded into oblivion, I think the answer is yes, up to a point. Your competitor made an unforced error. You did not go hunting or hacking for this information. As long as the solicitation is mindful of the way in which the addresses were obtained, and presents a genuine choice for the customer (and is not followed by repeated unending annoyance), go ahead and pitch your offer.
It's just an offer, after all. Customers can choose to accept or reject it. Some might even be glad to hear from the competition.
...but actually I think it's insightful. We keep getting such stupid mail, too, and I've done exactly what you suggest, with good results. ;)
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
point him at this:
http://www.sethgodin.com/permission/
Seth Godin is the marketing guru who advised google on how to succeed in business. he knows his stuff, and he is MASSIVELY anti spam.
Tell your boss he needs to read the guys book before he does something that could wreck his business.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Has your boss/company tried piking the public phonebook list and calling random people? Why / why not?
My sig is better than your sig.
You should tell him to GO FOR GOLD!
Spam is proven to:
* Enlarge your penis!
* Earn you money WHILE you browse the web!
* Get YOU laid NOW!
visit http://cashforbigdickaction.biz/ for more info!
(the 1000th visitor wins a free Rolex!)
I'll burn the place down.
the competitor has included email in the headers, one of the recipients will be compromised result is all mailing list compromised for much worse things than travel deals.
As a compromise to spamming their list I would send them a one time email asking them if they want to opt in.
If he got this email from being on a email list that he subscribed to then that would imply that every one else on the list did as well. If this is true, then the other people in the email all ready asked for spam from one company, this would lead to say that most of the people on the list would not see another email of the same type as spam. You have to look at email as some people do sign up for email advertisements so calling all email advertisements spam is one problem.
I do not like spam and will never use it for anything I do. But if ever needed/wanted to setup a email news letter or something along those lines, then I would not see it as spam and the same would go for the people receiving them.
what business-oriented arguments can I use to dissuade my boss from spamming?
;)
Spammers run the risk of being brutally murdered which I think is also somewhat bad for business..
We'll all write to him and explain our views on the matter.
Tell your boss that if there is one fake, self referential, or unlisted e-mail address the competitor would get know that he was spamming and use it against him.
"We don't spam" advertising campaign...
Of course no publicity is bad publicity, but maybe he's too dumb to know that...
That is partially incorrect, or at least not as black and white as you make it sound.
The short version is: Lack of ethics alone is no guarantee of success, by itself. There is more than one kind of sociopath, and more than one outcome. The smart ones do end up CEOs and on the cover of magazines. The stupid ones end up bankrupt and/or in jail.
So while stealing your competitor's customers _is_ good, the real issue is how you do it.
A. Spam is a rather low probability of success business. The majority of people don't answer to it, and in fact far more just become annoyed at you and/or blacklist you. It works for spamming normal people, because, well, if 0.1% of the recipients buy something, and you spammed ten million, well, you do the maths. The same maths can work against you when you're dealing with a small number of corporate customers. If you spam 20 corporations you got from one CC, chances are you'll gain nothing, and get only the bad parts.
B. Spam works mostly on, well, dumb people. Companies have too many layers of people whose job is to prevent doing something stupid. Your spam would have to go through everyone from the mail admin whose job is to block spam (if nothing else, because the CEO wouldn't get any job done at all if he was buried alive in a billion spam messages), to procurement and controlling, to the secretary of the boss you're trying to spam. Even that boss probably isn't as dumb as you assume, if he got to be successful in business, but even he is not the only one you must get past.
But even if they were no better than the average population, that chance goes down spectacularly by sheer number of people involved. Even if you managed to craft your spam as to get a whole 1% response rate from normal people, if there are as little as 3 different people who have to approve that purchase, the chance becomes one in a million.
Companies also move slowly and don't change suppliers or providers overnight. It's not like spamming Joe Sixpack who might be drunk enough to go, "ya know, I always wanted herbal pills." A company of any size above mom-and-pop shops will even deal with you at all, doesn't do things on a drunk impulse. There'll be lots of meetings and memos shoved around before you even get a chance to make your offer. Trying to bypass that process might work, if you're some manager's cousin or drinking buddy, but don't think that just one email is anywhere near enough. An offer out of nowhere that didn't go through that approval process, will most likely be ignored completely.
C. While it may be good for business to be a sociopath, it's very bad for business to get the reputation as one. The successful sociopath is the one who always has a convincing excuse or pretext, not the one advertises, basically, "I have my own company and I'm a bigger arsehole than goatse.cx." Businesses try hard to whitewash their reputation and pose as honest, upstanding pillars of the community. Because it's good for business. PR backlashes can do a hell of a lot of harm. Daikatana for example is the most visible example of a game that was merely mediocre, but got thoroughly sunk by a hell of bad PR backlash. It works in other domains too.
Becoming known as a spammer works when you have nothing to lose. If you're a two bit crook selling pressed parsley pills as ancient herbal medicines out of your basement, well, you don't really have much to lose. It's not like you have steady long-term customers or a business depending on your image in any community, so you can't lose them. If you are a more traditional business, though, you may not want that kind of reputation. And even the two bit crooks eventually have to change names, make more fly-by-night companies, etc, to keep peddling their goods.
D. Spam gets blacklisted fast. There's a reason spammers use faked senders, backscatter, etc. Because otherwise they get blocked fast, their ISP pulls the plug, etc.
And again, companies have people whose _job_ is to make sure spam doesn't get through. They _will_
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
By the sound of it you'll be the one sending out those e-mails. If that's true: refuse to do it, for all the reasons mentioned above. If he fires you for that he's a jerk you don't want to work for anyway.
How about the Golden Rule? Ever heard of it? What would Jesus do? If your Boss's heart is not Bible trained then this may be a mute point.Business practices doe NOT excuse good judgment or honesty.Simply put,Spam is not a Christian practice.
Make sure your boss' inbox gets all the bouncebacks! That'll make them think twice before doing it again at least.
I can think of lots of ways to re-educate someone who thinks spamming is a good idea: Beating him with a crowbar, pulling his fingernails out with pliers, stick hot pokers under his toes, stuff his ass with broken glass and seal him up with glue, keel-hauling (Works with a truck on the highway if you're landlocked), there's plenty of options. Pity most of them aren't legal.
> gmail's spam filtering beats Thunderbird's handily
And in this, we see an faint echo of the enormous power in the information that Google collects:
1) They have a lot more training data
2) They can make a comparative analysis to catch large batches of largely identical messages which arrive at their servers within short time periods
Surly the fact that it's totally illegal should be enough?
You wouldn't ask us to explain to your boss why he shouldn't scam VAT, or smoke freebase would you?
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
Maybe you could ask yourself why it matters to you care about being moral. (I'm not trying to be preachy or patronizing here. I'm trying to think this out for myself, too.)
If you're really just trying to avoid the unpleasant emotion of 'guilt', then you might be a hedonist, trying to maximize personal pleasure and minimize personal pain. (In this case, emotional pain.) So I guess you'd need to weigh the pleasure and pain of sending the spam, against the pleasure and pain of sticking by your guns and perhaps getting fired.
If you believe that being moral has some greater metaphysical or religious importance, then I think you have a different calculation to do. Your goal is probably to achieve the greatest good and/or the least evil. But you might believe that doing anything immoral is absolutely forbidden, and is not permitted even if you expect it would facilitate a greater good or prevent a worse evil. If that's the case, then your decision is made for you: you simply must not span.
A tough call. I would stay out of it. Most people like to learn the hardway. I don't do business on the internet. I want to visit your place of business, hear your name, and see the colour of your eyes before I shop or give you money.
Your boss only has to piss off one of the thousands who recieve his unsolicited emails who seek revenge and he will be paid in spam which has a negataive value on so many levels.
Have him check the terms of the company's ISP and domain contracts first. For example, as I was renewing my personal domain with GoDaddy the other day, I realized their terms include liquidated damages of $1 per message for spam sent from a GoDaddy account:
Unless he's eager to lose a lot of money and/or end up in court, he'll probably back off.
I recommend looking for other employment, as your boss has clearly aligned himself with spammer, phishers, scammers, typosquatters, child pornographers, and the other scum of the Internet. Such an unethical person -- who clearly values profit far above rudimentary ethics -- will obviously not hesitate to engage in other illicit activities, given that he's already enthusiastically in favor of large-scale Internet abuse. There's no reason for you to go along for the ride -- just publish the domain name so that we can all permanently blacklist it and file your resignation.
I will never buy or recommend goods or services from companies that spam. I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one.
Anyway. The reason your boss should not do it is not because it's immoral, but because your IT staff and company does not have the technical experience to do it right.
Doing it right means: avoiding blowing complaint thresholds with receiving ISPs, setting up a complaint loop and unsubscribing quickly, not burning out your IPs, having multiple clean IPs to send from, having someone to manage relations with ISPs and spam organizations, understanding the relationship between # of complaints and sending volumne, and understanding the effect of attrition on list size and the need to resupply it with new leads.
Realize this is only the scratch of the surface. Successfully sending email at high volume is complicated. You're risking losing your ISP contract, getting all your IPs listed as spam sources, and destroying your reputation in your industry. These are difficult things to achieve for those who have experience with sending commercial bulk email. I will tell you right now, you do not have the knowledge to it right.
Instead, you will probably pimp out your email list to a corporation that specializes in sending email. It will simply things greatly, sure, and they will assume the delivery risks and you will cut them a hefty profit share, but understand many of those providers use employ very sleazy techniques. They often skirt legality by playing semantic games with CANSPAM and other laws. Also, sometimes they rely on extremely large numbers of hosts (such as Datran) and actively pursue methods to break through spam filters using various forms of text and markup for the email content. Other times, they contract out the dirty work to illegal bot networks which perform the actual delivery. Some may even pay ISPs to get Inbox delivery, cutting back on net profit.
Using the wrong sending provider could also mean losing editorial control of what gets sent to your list. They may slam it with general offers, totally unrelated to your product. They may exert extreme pressure on you to do so, which could unnecessarily piss off your client base. They won't be satisfied with hitting up your users once a week, they will SLAM them 3-5 times a day. They don't care about pissing your clients off. They can always burn out your list and move on to the next list, leaving you to deal with the aftermath.
Are there ways to send SPAM, or rather commercial bulk email, to your list and stay clean? Yes, there is. Believe it or not, some people WANT your email. If your boss still wants to continue with it, fight very hard for the following:
Camping on quad since 1996.
The takeup rate on spam is extremely low, much lower than paper based junk mail.
However the damage to your image is vast, I would never buy from a company that spammed me and I'm sure there's many others who won't either.
tell him that spam never works for legitimate companies that dont infect people's pcs and spam out of the zombies made because :
1 - get past some number of Cc:s and your mail instantly drops to spam, or even dropped to blackhole. it may be 10 in some services, 20 in others.
2 - gmail has a very efficient spam filtering. your spam will probably get detected in the 50th or 100th email arriving in gmail and will fall to spam. at hotmail 101th email will go to blackhole.
3 - probably around 500th email you are going to get listed in spamcop.net and hundreds of thousands of private, small web host firm servers that use whm/cpanel will automatically start filtering your emails because they use blacklists. (new auto feature in whm, turns on with a single click and save).
4 - very soon youll isp will be informed of your doing, and contact you to inquire. if you are not able to put a valid excuse, well, youre in trouble.
tell that to your idiot boss. tourism industry people generally think spam works. i have seen it before.
Read radical news here
You can't convince him. You can scare him. Show him the legal stuff.
There's more then one way to make use of a mailing list.
I wouldn't send spam to one, if only because I saw how useless it is in my last job. We got 7 replies from a list of 5000 people. 4 of those were telling us how they had no interest to begin with, and now have even less, and the other 3 went nowhere.
However, if you can get some more information on the people, your sales team can probably pick out a few that might be interested in your company, and make a call to them offering to have a look at their requirements and see what they can do for them.
If he chooses to do it, let him. It's his downfall.
However, if he tries to make *you* (or the IT team etc.) do it, then you question it heavily and ask for a *signed, written* note from himself describing what he wants you to do before you'll do it. Just asking for that will raise enough doubt in his mind to put him off unless he's incredibly stupid. If it's illegal, it shows that HE ordered it, despite your reservations and considered it part of your job despite your protests.
If the very mention of written evidence gets you sacked, it's a matter for a tribunal, which will make it much harder for him to explain his (probably illegal in most civilised countries) behaviour. Trust me, if that's the case, you really DON'T want to be working there anyway and it would only be a matter of time before something else came up of a similar sort.
On the "explanation" side, you don't need to explain. It's very simple. Your competitor probably broke several Data Protection Act's or similar laws by accidentally including the private emails of customers in an email to all the other customers. Using such information yourself is not only breaking the same laws, but worse (because you have no right to that data at all, rather than a simple accident).
It also leaves you open to accusations of "stealing" business (like the court cases which arise when people "take" business address books filled with customers to start their own competing company). This is very bad and very easy to get found out, especially if one of those emails on that list happens to be, say, the PR officer's brother, or their PR proofreader or something - if they work out that YOUR company had access to private data belonging to their business through a legal mistake and that you used it to competitive advantage, your company could be in BIG trouble.
Then you have the fact that in most countries it's illegal to spam at all. Then you have problems such as customers bringing private actions against you for sending such spam. The company image being degraded, customers getting irate and wasting your time to cancel/complain about your spam, there are a million and one problems.
For instance, I personally use unique emails for every website, every company, every competition I enter, etc. encoded in a way that companies can't tell... it's not as simple as microsoft@mydomain.com, but I wouldn't be surprised if a great many people use such a system. And because I have made it easy to check which email is available to which companies, I *do* check emails, ESPECIALLY SPAM, for their To: address. Most auto-generated spam has a faked username prefix on the address and thus is instantly filtered. Companies, which tend to spam adddresses that they've verified are true (e.g. customers etc.), that spam my address get their prefix filtered, too. Which leaves a whitelist of "genuine" prefixes at my domain that go straight to my inbox.
When spam DOES accidentally arrive at my inbox (say, addressed to office_supplies_company@mydomain.com), either because my filter fails or because someone spams a "real" address without permission, I complain to the company involved. The usual first reponse is "it wasn't us" until the situation is properly explained in a nice recorded-delivery letter to their head office citing their own privacy policies. This is usually swiftly followed by a rapid retraction of their statements, a removal of my address from their databases and an instant blacklist for their company emails. But, then, my country has good Data Protection laws.
If just ONE of those customers has such a system, you're going to get more hassle in terms of data management, fielding calls, reading letters etc. than you can make up for in sales to people whom you've spammed, that are not interested in your/your business and would already be using you instead of that "competitor" if they were.
And then, there's the "being stupid" factor - the SECOND I saw such tricks being pulled (competing companies directly trying to
There's quite a few people I work with that find it necessary to CC: people on almost every single email they write. It seems their purpose is, "if I CC my entire management chain, then you will have to do my bidding..." rather than just asking the person to do the task with a convincing argument, they CC the VP...
I feel sorry for those in his/her mgmt chain that receive all that crap.
Tell him when he spams, he'll be the one in the jail cell.
Just go find another boss.
Man, this is so sadly true. I worked for a company for about 6 months before leaving for greener pastures. They sent mass marketing emails multiple times per month, with as many as 10,000 recipients. They were cautious to not send messages to any one recipient too often so they didn't piss off that person.
The fact is that given the quality of their messages - they weren't V1gara Ci1ais, they weren't scam attempts, and in fact they were pretty carefully targeted based on what industry vertical you were in - they actually had a pretty high response rate. For most campaigns they saw 10-15% response, and they had sales reps personally contact each of those responders (now known as leads).
The calculated lead-to-sale value for email campaigns based a floating 6-month average was around $1,600 (the software cost anywhere from $10,000 to $150,000 depending on which modules you purchased with it, and including 1 year of support maintenance - many customers actually signed on for many years, but it's not considered part of the initial sale). I don't know what the percentage was for lead-to-sale, they didn't track it that way.
So for every person who filled out a contact form from following the link in an email, they made an average of $1,600. When you're sending 10,000 emails for a single campaign, and you have a 10% response rate, each of which is worth $1,600, that campaign profited $16,000. It's hard to argue against this.
In addition, many of those contacts turn into sales later and aren't tracked as a email-to-sale because the email only enabled the relationship with the sales rep to open up, and the sales rep was able to make an independent sale months or possibly years later which wouldn't have been possible without the email sparking an interest.
The company wasn't interested in the moral implications. They weren't interested in the legality of it so long as they adhered to the bare minimum that was required to be legal. They were interested in this thing which provided 100-fold plus return on investment so long as they didn't try to wring to much out of it or otherwise abuse it.
Of course they had to honor opt-out requests, and they did. But they received fewer opt-outs for each campaign than they received leads; and often times the leads they received weren't from the person who received the email, but were actually a colleague who forwarded the message to their coworker or friend; they might actually have added more new recipients each campaign than opted out.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Avoid? There's plenty of laws that let you get big money out of him!
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
1. It's illegal, you could be fined.
2. It's illegal, you could be sued.
3. It's illegal, your domain could be shutdown; no more sending e-mails, no more receiving e-mails, no more website.
4. A spam filter may decide your domain sends junk and throws out all your e-mails.
5. You are giving away your customer list. All those addresses in the 'To:' and 'CC:' are your customers, and you just gave them away.
And take with you who you can. Refuse to conduct his stupid plan and quit. These people never learn out of discussions. The only valuable lesson you can teach this guy is that when you are a dick people don't want to work with you. I know it's hard but the best thing would be to get his business to a halt. But that's just my rebellious currently unemployed ass saying that (but it works).
I also had the same problem with one of my employers in the past. I simply explained to him that it was illegal and that they can lock you for it. Lucky for my a had a local example http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080514/NEWS10/720447000 of what can happen. I find the articles I found of him rather interesting since people around here were told he was locked up. While the articles seem to just say he's nowhere to be found.
If your boss is an idiot and refuses to listen to reason, there's no reason not to do the honorable thing. Namely, kill the boss, burn the building to the ground, and start again somewhere else. Bonus points for bringing all the good employees with you.
If your company has a legal team or compliance dept, they may very well take a dim view of bringing the company into disrepute. I work in the finance sector and we get compliance nailing us on the most innocent things, 'cos mistakes cost big bucks. We've had people fired for simply downloaded too much or viewing too many You tube videos during lunchtimes. Anything that could identify us and our non-work related activities to our competitors is very seriously dealt with!
dl
Tell your bosses that Spam pisses people off and it tarnishes your branding and sabotages any promotional efforts.
There, Problem solved.
Remind him that this button-down, Oxford-cloth psycho might just snap, and then stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers. This might be someone you've known for years. Someone very, very close to you.
toooooooo short to read
Keep it simple: When people receive SPAM, they get pissed off. You don't want to piss off your customers.
The competition sent you an email with some of their so-so customers' names in the hopes that you would make complete idiots of yourselves trying to poach them, spamming included.
I've seen this in other messages here but I wanted to give it another mention. When I get SPAM I go out of my way to never buy from those who spam me. I buy from competitor who don't spam me.
I would tell him to inform the competitor's customers that their email had been leaked by that company. The customers would look for an alternative company. the fist place they will look will be your web site.
All will be happy with this solution
It's not spam if your not trying to sale something
Ethical, kind people go bankrupt.
Not always, no. How about The Co-operative Bank or Cafedirect to name two off the top of my head. I'm sure I could find more if I could be bothered to look harder.
Spamming is rather profitable when it can convince the customer that the risk/reward ratio is very low, and when you're selling products that are either discretionary or interchangeable. If you're selling mainstream porn, it can be a rather suitable marketing vehicle, but none of these conditions apply to Real Estate. Real Estate is always a high risk investment, so customers will scrutinize you very carefully, and spam isn't going to help there. Worse, since Real Estate is highly localized, many of the targets are already potential customers, so you could actually be hurting your reputation and driving away more customers than you bring in.
Real Estate is a high-contact industry, and the impression given by that first contact is absolutely critical. Spamming might bring you a couple customers this month, but it will lose you many more in years to come.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
amuzing bhima.cant put it more plainer
If he were to put all the mail addresses into a TO or CC field (and given what he is planning, he may be stupid enough to do this), and one of the recipients is on an unpatched Microsoft Small Business Server 2003, then he may produce a torrent of regenerated emails. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=7B1FF109-092E-4418-AA37-A53AF7B8F6FC&displaylang=en The link above doesn't really explain the outcome of hitting this fault very well, but it is "interesting". The unpatched server regenerates the mail to all recipients again, repeatedly, about once a minute, until it is switched off or patched. And every single email appears to come from the original sender. http://www.nicva.org/index.cfm/section/General/key/190805DupEmails Cue lots of very very irate people telling you to stop spamming them - and there is nothing you can do directly other than identify the sender from the mail headers and try and persuade them it is their system at fault. I have seen this happen a couple of times to our customers, it isn't pretty. So, from a business perspective, this act could destroy customer relations rather than create them. Is that good enough.
Several years ago I worked (for a couple of weeks only) at a start-up. The boss wanted to publicize it - Spammed (he came bragging about the 3 million recipients of his mail). I told him that was unethical IMHO. He did it a second time. I quit my job.
I think they got the message. Did they stop it? I don't think so... But still, that's a good way to say "there are people who think you are plain evil".
Definitely spam them. Spam them up and down. Spam them until they're blue in the face. Spam them until your fingers bleed. Put the other company as the sender of the spam.
The next day after you stop, send one modest advertisement (spam lite?) to the list, from your company.
Of course, this advice only applies if my name is not on the list.
(Note- this advice also does not apply if you have morals)
"However, morals don't go very far in the business world, so I'm asking Slashdot: what business-oriented arguments can I use to dissuade my boss from spamming?""
There are better approaches. Spam is for losers who don't care about annoying 99% of their potential customers.
If they really want to do something constructive, make it a project for someone to go through the list of e-mail addresses in the CC: and From: addresses, try to figure out what businesses the addresses correspond to (it won't be possible for all, but I bet many of them), and mail them an old-fashioned letter personally signed by the boss. That's likely to have a far more positive effect than a bunch of spam.
If you want to rub it in, you could include a comment that "Unlike some of our competitors, we don't use mass-market bulk e-mail (spam)."
America, fuck yeah?
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
What a wonderful opportunity to advance yourself at your bosses' expense.
1. Tell everybody that it will be bad for the business. Except him.
2. Go ahead and do as you're told.
3. Wait with barely surpressed excitement for the backlash. After it arrives, sneak back in the night and shovel some dog poo through the letterbox. In the morning, smoothly explain it must have been the angry customers. You'll look brilliant for sagely predicting disaster from the sidelines. When your boss inevitably fails, you might be able to take his job.
Try dressing up in robes and chains, adopt a thick Russian accent, and break into his house at night claiming to be the ghost of the last spammer who pissed off the Russian mob. "Business? Not being a douche bag should have been my business!"
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
"However, morals don't go very far in the business world..."
/., posting on /., reading /., knocking orphans in the head with sticks, telling kids that Santa Claus ate the Easter Bunny, reading Bleak House out loud on the subway, not bathing until the new Duke Nukem comes out, glitching in FPSs, griefing in MMORPGs, hexediting save files to get infinite grenades, and worst of all, reading digg.
You should consider finding a new job if your existing coworkers are abandoning their morals wholesale. First they spam. Next thing you know they start prostitution rings and move on to drug running, gun running, nun slapping, butter wasting, bacon overcooking, hunting deer out of season, tearing the tags off of pillows and cushions, ringing door bells and running away, not declaring tips on their tax returns, running red lights in empty intersections at four in the morning, buying SUVs that get 13 mpg, burying the patent office in paperwork regarding one click patents, trolling on
Aye, it's a slippery slope you're on.
Are you really sure you need that particular job that badly?
For what little it's worth, I once encountered a similar moral dilemma, and I gave notice immediately. I haven't regretted it--and I'm pretty sure his business went down the tubes, too. At least I never heard of it again.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
My former employer decided to start spamming even after meetings where I explained the dangers of spam, how it's unethical , etc, etc. They really wanted to do it, because they decided to listen to one person who had dollar signs in his eyes.
Long story short, I quit the job, but I had to deal with spam for about a month while I was looking for a different employer. Somehow it was my fault that we were blacklisted by most of the major ISPs and mail services. The IT director was too shortsighted to farm out the spamming to someone else.
Everything worked out great in the end, because I'm at a place now that would never spam and I'm working with bright people on some very cool projects.
So yeah, my advice is quit and tell him why you're quitting if he won't listen to your advice.
All I can say is good luck! Not as a troll or anything, but as an observer who fought against his own company's plans to spam for many years.
Spam is like crack to marketing people. It's cheap, easy, and at the volumes they do it in- even dismal 1% returns are seen as glorious successes. I swear the Marketing Director where I work has an orgasm every time he gets a new email list.
(Posting Anonymously to protect my job and company. They will get nailed soon enough.)
We started small- email "newsletters" to people we had legitimate business dealings with. Then, it was expanded to include EVERYONE we've ever gotten an email address from, now- it's 3-4 "blasts" a day to any email address our Marketing staff can get their hands on. Damn the law- "We will keep doing it until we get called on it." It sucks. As an IT Manager- I have to stomach the fact that this sh*t gets sent from servers and a network that I built.
I hope you are able to dissuade your boss- especially since it doesn't sound like they have any legal right to actually use that list.
(Posting anonymously to protect my job and company. They will get nailed soon enough.)
Spam is obviously an effective way to make money, or else it would have gone away by now. This is business, not some slashdot ideal here. Spam the list, make some cash.
I have a similar problem. The owner of the company I work for(about 180 employees)and several other upper management are constantly sending out these obnoxious email forwards to the entire company. Most are religious based or blatant right wing propaganda. The last one was wishing us a "Happy early fourth of July" which included: .gifs of tanks, troops and jet fighters. ...it never stops, its a daily thing
-A drawing of small child dressed in animated sparkly red white and blue.
-The entire pledge of allegiance with the words one nation under god underlined and blinking.
-Animated pixel
-The most vulgar misuse of the font Papyrus and all caps typing I've ever seen.
-And as always the words "PLEASE
KEEP IT GOING TO YOUR FRIENDS, DON'T LET THE FLAME DIE OUT!PLEASE KEEP THIS GOING".
Y'know, it's funny how some stereotypes are "wrong," even if they have a basis in fact, while others are bandied about without question even if they HAVE no basis.
There is no evidence whatsoever that "morals don't go very far in the business world." Businesspeople are human beings, and as such they are no less moral than any other. In fact, you could make the argument that businesspeople, because they are focused on customer satisfaction and producing a product or service, have MORE incentive for morality and ethics.
Regardless, I find the O.P.'s unquestioned assumption to be insipid and dull.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
It's a longshot, but try to convince your boss that you may be able to win over tech-smart customers (the ones who may have more disposable income) by pointing out what a poor business (and consumer privacy) tactic is such an "in the clear" distribution list.
Craft a short but easy-to-read message that tactfully (and subtly) chastises the other business for sending an email message with all recipients visible rather than relying on an 'undisclosed recipients' list or at least using the BCC field.
Add a second paragraph that notes that your business would never risk exposing its customer list to harvesting by spiders, spam-bots, and bulk-emailers by sending such a message with the user list in the clear. Cite some statistics about how big the spam problem is, and ask the other company to do everything it can to fight spam, rather than underwrite it.
Of course, if the boss doesn't go for it, the ethical thing to do (as an individual) would be to give your competitor a heads-up regarding its gaffe. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it will paint you in a good light if you ever need to change jobs and would consider applying there.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
But you might consider giving some helpful advice to each of those people. Perhaps something like:
I recently received a spam email from otherTravelAgency attempting to sell me a vacation package. I noticed that otherTravelAgency included your email address on the "To" list in that message. It seems that otherTravelAgency has given your personal information to everyone else on that huge distribution list. I don't know about you, but I won't do business with any company that gives my personal information to thousands of people. I deal with goodTravelAgency for my own travel needs. I trust them to keep my personal information safe, and never to give it to anyone. You might want to consider changing travel agencies, too.
Easy - just turn his spam filter off for a day, then ask him whether he read any of it.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
is not to.
Let me tell you how this goes. Somebody gets an idea that seems really neat. They see all kinds of benefits to this idea. Now you come in and decide to convince them it's really a bad idea. You each without thinking take up your debate club roles, him arguing the affirmative, you arguing the negative. Only in this debate, the opposing team is the judge.
It gets worse. This kind of thing gets emotional, because once somebody is enchanted with an idea, all those good things he imagines as a result seem to be within his grasp. You'll the one who is bent on taking all that away. It's an amazingly stupid attitude, if you think about it, but we all have it, hardwired in.
So, trust me, you you don't want to try to convince your boss not to do this. What you want to do is inform him. This means you must be totally fair, objective, balanced, and in no way an advocate of anything other than two things: having a complete plan for dealing with the results of the course of action, and knowing what the alternative courses of action entail.
The boss might even be right. If you aren't prepared for that possibility, you can't do this.
One thing is certain: if you plant the seeds of doubt in his mind, he'll look at those doubts as weeds. If he owns those doubts, he's more likely to let them bear fruit.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
W4NT 4 B1GG3R P3N1S????
As this comment points out, this would never have happened if the original sender had put their vast list of customers (friends, associates, whatever) in bcc. I rarely use multiple to's or cc's unless I wish the recipients to know of each other in relation to a particular message.
Bleh, should have proof-read that, $1,600,000 profit (though sometimes minus a few thousand or tens of thousands for a purchased or rented recipient list).
Are you kidding? This is your first real chance to be at the other end of the spam channel! Take advantage of it; rob those suckers out of everything they're worth!
I believe he meant:
'/\/\./'
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
You can always do what I did to deter people from clicking "reply to all" for everything.
... and made my supervisors question my sanity for some reason.
Put a whiteboard close to your desk/cube with the words "Every time you Reply to All, God kills a kitten" (or in your case, "every time you spam..."). Be sure to include a picture of a sad kitten next to it and keep a running counter of "Kittens killed".
Didn't stop people from replying to all, but it did slow things down.
Having been in the "business world" for 15 years now, I can assure you that morals *do* go quite far. Some people choose not to, but they typically lose in the end.
Do you have ESP?
Then ask him what he thought of the company / person that left the flyer on his car.
Then point out that spam is identical behaviour. The difference being that my anti-spam software will learn about you-all, and hold a grudge for a long time. Which is as it should be.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
Just take the whole list and change every address by one letter so that when he sends the emails out he gets 1000+ "unknown recipient" emails back. It is a good lesson about how annoying unwanted mail is.
Um... what? You think signing up for a competitor's mailing list to keep track of their business is morally wrong? You probably also think it's unethical to undercut them on price, right? Wow.
Incidentally, calling your ISP and asking them about their "policy about sending spam" is pretty much the dumbest thing you could possibly do.
I have 2 ideas.
1) since you say your competitor did a spam blast recently... I suggest you put your anti-spam theory to the test and tell your boss that you expect your competitor will see a negative backlash from the spam and they should do something to take advantage of that. For example, put a "Unlike our competitors, we don't spam" statement somewhere in your advertising to highlight this.
2) When I see spam from an otherwise "legit" company I immediately think that they're suddenly not legit. In your case, if I saw spam from your company, I'd think that your travel company is a shell designed solely to get my identifying information for fraudulent purposes. Legit companies don't spam. The funny thing is, this is practically hard-wired into my brain. I'm not believing this out of spite or "voting with my dollars", it's deeper and less emotional than that... getting spam from ANY legit company permanently puts them into a less trustworthy category in my eyes.
I have clients that are RE Agents. And they have me do this, but not to customers to OTHER RE Agents, :D :D, and gadgets. When they join the associations they put their info with email address, and this gets delivered to ANYONE who wants to pay for it. And man, do they get indignant when you inform them that their membership in the association authorizes other association members to contact them. Then they put themselves on the 'Do Not Contact' list and they don't get contacted... at all. No leads etc. I can't market to you, i won't deal with you. :D
so I am happy to do so. It's very funny, they pay a shitload of money to take a test that is less difficult than the high school exit exam, then even more to join an association, and more for crappy software
It's like piranha eating each other, and i get paid to watch
So, spamming normal people == bad, spamming colleagues, sure.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Long experience has taught me not to get in the way of management wanting to due something stupid. My advice is to get some popcorn, stand back, and enjoy the show...
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
My first reaction was, "Ugh! How annoying! Who are these jerks blowing our fax paper on a stupid ad for a useless product?" --And this was before Spam existed under that name as a real feature of our reality, which to me indicates that I just have a very low tolerance for any kind of social manipulation. But here's the thing. . .
All the women in our office got into this fluster of consumerist excitement. "Hundreds of different watch styles for cheap!" The building concourse was flooded with people looking for watches, like a flea market hopped up on caffeine, and when the day was over the girls were showing off two and three watches each, swapping them like trading cards and generally having a grand old time. Even some of the guys got sucked in. And I felt like an old sourpuss sticking to principal and wondering if it was the Human Race which was stupid, or if it was me. (That office job did that to me a great deal.)
But anyway. . , the point is that with the right level of care and planning, SPAM not only works, but it works really well.
Heck, I know a couple of people who forwarded that "Bill Gates is giving a hundred bucks to everybody who forwards this email" email. It made their day! Some people actually enjoy being pandered to like consumerist bovines. They are locked into the system and being advertised at is a major feature of that system which is not only expected by desired.
So yeah. The point is that ignorant apes are sometimes happy being ignorant apes. But I still wouldn't send out 1000 emails to potential travel clients, because in the massive noise filling the channel most will ignore the spam and people like me will blacklist his company.
Oh, and in case you're wondering, I decided that neither me nor the Human Race were wrong. There's just different types of people and different levels of awareness/expectation, and that's okay! People can self-annihilate themselves through ignorance if that's their predisposition. But for some reason office buildings seem to attract that brand of human, and I will die before I allow myself to work in cubicle land ever again. My own level of ignorance needs to be worked on in a different environment, or I'll simply interrupt the process by murdering a bunch of apes with too many cheap watches.
-FL
I'm sorry?...
Oh! you think this is digg!
Here's what you do. Go to your address bar (that's the white bar in the grey bar, somewhere under the big blue E at the top of your screen) and type in digg.com. Use your keyboard, that thing in front of you with all of the letters on it. Type d-i-g-g-.-c-o-m and press enter (the button on your keyboard that says "enter").
Then you can post all the meaningless, inane posts you care to. Don't do it here, though. It makes you look dumb.
A number of years ago, I was in a similar situation. I told my boss, in writing, that if he spammed I would quit.
My reasons were:
1) I didn't think the company would last long if they resorted to spamming.
2) If I'd knowingly worked for a spammer, I would be forever unemployable in any industry related to technology.
3) "I quit because my previous employer sent spam" was, on the other hand, an answer I'd be proud to give in any job interview.
4) Self-respect is worth more than any job in the world.
He seemed genuinely shocked that I felt so strongly. He seemed to feel as though spamming was equivalent to telemarketing; I explained that he was proposing to commit petty theft and make me an accomplice. (And if he'd steal from strangers, why should I believe he wouldn't steal from me?)
I'm pretty sure that I didn't talk him out of it singlehandedly. But he did stop, and listen to some other opinions, and eventually came to an understanding that spamming would make him a pariah, not a success. That one conversation got pretty heated, but we ended up having a good working relationship afterwards. (YMMV!)
Of course, it's a lot easier to take a principled stand when you're pretty sure you can find another job in fifteen minutes. And it'd only get results if you worked in a company (or group) small enough that they'd feel it if you bailed.
But you should still find the door if your employer spams. See reason (4).
This is why I don't like capitalism too much.
Even if a message arrives in my mailbox, addressed to me, mentions my wife by name, and complements me on the the good behavior of my dog, If they are trying to sell me something or introduce me to something IT IS SPAM.
Your kind of spam is just harder to make, but it is still spam.
This isn't flamebait, though I know I'm liable to get flamed for daring to think this way...
Any technique that is successful is rewarded and continues to grow.
Any technique that is unsuccessful is not rewarded and slowly dies out.
The sad truth is that spam works. Sure, 99.999% of people are smart enough to ignore your spam. But if you send a million coppies, that's still 100 people who are now giving you business you wouldn't otherwise have had.
IIRC, during the dotcom era, a new customer was considered worth about $100 (part of why people were given so much for free). If your cost of spamming is under $10,000 and you get 100 customers from it, it makes sense.
It's immoral, it's abusive, but it does work.
However, it only works anymore when the spammer is a more transient business. If they sell a thousand bottles of viagra and then disappear, it's a thousand bottles that a store with absolutely no reputation could never have sold. They then set up with a new name and repeat.
If you're a travel agent with an established reputation, the balance shifts. Now you have large numbers of people who treat you with contempt and will never do business with you and, unlike the traditional spammer, you can't just close down and put up a new storefront under a new name because you've spent years building your reputation with other customers and need to keep that identity.
I've always thought it's a massive mistake to tell kids that drugs are bad. They then try them, discover they're pretty fantastic, and ignore everything else you had to say on the subject. Much better to say, "Drugs are awesome in the short term but here are all of their costs and, no matter how clever you think you are, the costs do always creep up on people." That way, when they do experiment and they do discover they feel awesome right now, they're still aware you were telling the truth and the consequences really are coming.
In the same vein, saying spamming is a bad business technique ignores the reality that, morally acceptable, widely hated, or not, it's a very successful one.
You try telling your boss that spam is a "bad" technique and, if he's smart enough to realize the technique's obviously working for a lot of people, all you've done is undermine his value in what you have to say. The same goes if he tries anyway and gets a single new customer he wouldn't have already had and tells himself, "See, I knew he was wrong!"
It's far better to acknowledge all the ways it is successful... but then list the costs. Put it to him in terms of all the years he's invested in that business, building its reputation. Is he willing to destroy that in the local community, where he can't set up a new storefront like the online guys, just to get a few thousand in revenue and several hundred in profits?
Phrased as, "Is all of the work you've done to build this business' reputation worth less than $1,000" may sell it very differently.
I completely agree. I am part of a sports nutrition business and although we do have a monthly newsletter and for that we use constant contact and it is opt-in. But we originally started doing weekly emails but it really didn't help us and people didn't like it. So now we limit ourselves to a monthly newsletter and the occasional email if there is an event (like our grand opening).
:P
Customer service really really really is key now in days. A little tiny bit of effort will pay dividends. Heck a travel agency is 100% customer service...because you are providing a professional service. You aren't selling a physical product.
Another thing we do and so does Nordstrom is to send a personalized email. And by personalized I mean the salesman has to sit down and write out and email based out the customer's experience in the store (usually what they buy).
You notice how while everyone else is losing money Nordstrom is opening up more stores and raking it in....you know why because people will pay a premium for service. People love service.
Thanks and remember being a douchbag (to your customers at least) is not the way to business. We have doing some cutthroat things to other businesses who compete against us. But as our customers are concerned we service them and give them advice and sell them nutrition products at the same price as everyone else. We don't claim to compete on price and in fact many of or stuff is MUCH CHEAPER online but thats not our market. We have 50% margins and so does every other nutrition place.
Your company probably gets Internet connectivity from an ISP, and possibly has that ISP or a dedicated mail service provider handling e-mail. Check the Terms of Service. They probably contain language about unsolicited bulk e-mail. Bring up this point and ask for guidance from the corporate counsel as to what steps, if any, you need to take to run the requested campaign without violating contracts the company's signed and putting their Internet and mail at risk. Let counsel handle the rest.
Maybe you don't have this luxury, but I'd say quit if at all possible. If you have to do much convincing, he's probably not the type of person you really want to be working for long term anyway. You might want to go ahead and send the mass e-mail for him first though, (and go ahead and submit a copy to spamcop, et. al. yourself), as a little parting gift and free lesson in the value of a domain name and strictly followed anti-spam policy.
For some time now I've been creating a separate email address for each company I do business with. If I see an address used in a mass mailing in a To or CC field I cancel that address after telling the company in question what I think of their protection of may privacy, and no longer do business with them.
If I saw a second company using an email address given to the first, I would know that the second company is not being operated in a completely moral way and would not transact any business with them for that reason.
Travel companies need to be very careful in this regard. I would believe a travel company that would pilfer addresses would also not stand behind their product should the unforeseen happen. Not a place where I would spend my money.
Forgive me for being critical, but unless you indisputably know that your employer's morals are questionable, I think it 's a little presumptuous of you to judge him over this issue. Without reading the majority of posts that have replied to you, I'm guessing that a lot of the responders agree with you.
That's one of the major problems I have with a lot of people here when it comes to these issues. Owning a business is not immoral. Wanting to make a profit, no matter how obscene one might believe it is, is not immoral. How high does your moral soapbox go when your company doubles it's profit and you get a nice raise or bonus?
Murder, rape, child abuse, theft: those things are immoral. Wanting to blast out a pile of advertising using current technologies isn't immoral. Looking for a way to edge out the competition, no matter how stupid the method, isn't immoral. You sound like a smart fellow. As the expert, it's up to you to explain the stupidity of his idea to him. While it may be easy to call the barrage of advertising in other media "immoral," if it wasn't there, accessing that media would be far more costly for us.
That being said, perhaps your employer doesn't quite understand the technical aspects, pitfalls and ethics of what he wants to do. I remind you: you're the expert; explain this to him. Place him in the position of the recipient of that unsolicited email (which he probably already is, if he has an e-mail account), and remind him of the fact that, even if the blast makes it to any of its targets (which it likely won't), his company may wind up blacklisted for spamming, and most of the targets who do get it will be angry enough to refuse to do further business with him.
He may not be the tech savvy person you are, so your job is to explain it to him in terms he understands: how it affects his bottom line. Once he understand that this will more likely affect him negatively, he'll probably back off on the idea. Perhaps advising him on some alternative methods, like setting up actual mailing lists which customers can sign up for via the website.
If he insists on doing this, and you've explained the downside, and you find what he wants to be professionally and personally reprehensible, quit. No one will ever criticize you for taking a stand on an issue like this.
But before you attack his morality, make sure he sees the big picture. Stop looking at the business community as some flaming pit of abhorrent behavior. Without "business," most of the people reading this would be out of work and complaining about the other "immorality": why don't I get some kind of government handout so I can eat and pay my rent?
Joe Dougherty, Florida, USA
The words I thought I brought, I left behind. So, never mind.
The following bad things invariably happen when you spam:
1. Your ISP will disconnect your internet connection.
2. Your hosting provider will close your website.
3. If you were stupid enough to use a real sender address, your email address will swiftly be overloaded with blowback, followed by your service provider terminating your email address.
Morals don't come in to it. Spam chews bandwidth and sysop hours, and threatens connectivity of the network due not merely to bandwidth, but also to other networks deciding they no longer want to talk to your service provider (blacklisting). Those three things alone will have your service disconnected long before you've reached any moral conclusion.
To spam effectively, you need to not care about losing your internet connection.
(Disclaimer: I used to work for MessageLabs)
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I recommend a cattle prod. Seriously.
"I quit. Find another IT guy."
That's really the only pervasive argument you have.
1) Let him send the spam
2) Report him to the FTC
Just let your boss know what your company's e-mail servers may very well end up on an RBL which would get ANY mail dropped from your servers as spam.
You could also explain that spamming people is probably a violation of the Terms of Service he or she agreed to when they got the Internet pipe installed. I would suggest getting hold of a copy of that ToS document (should be readily available from your ISP's site), highlight the section prohibiting spamming, and let your boss read it.
If said boss is still determined to go through with this, explain that such behavior is very likely to get his company's IP address range entered into both local (as in at the target's) blocking list, and possibly that of larger anti-spam outfits such as Spamhaus.
If that should happen, it is very possible that further E-mail, no matter what its content, could end up not getting through to any recipient(s) who use an ISP that subscribes to Spamhaus's blocking service (and LOTS do!)
Proceeding along this train of thought -- If enough people complain to the ISP that your boss is getting his/her connectivity from, it is very possible that your connection could go down. Permanently and unexpectedly.
The RIGHT thing to do is file a formal complaint with the ISP that your competitor is getting connectivity from. It is very likely that said competitor violated said ISP's ToS, and could end up getting THEIR connection terminated. Your boss should be able to appreciate that.
Good luck.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
who still send out mass mailings with CC email addresses deserve everything they've got coming to them... all those on the CC: list should sue the pants off them...
BCC, it's there for a reason... Use it guys... I blame Outlook for basically hiding the option and management for not properly educating staff in email etiquette...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Send your boss the URL for this Slashdot thread
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
I am a larger sized woman. There are not very many places I can get nice clothes that fit for a reasonable price. A new one opened. They sent me a paper catalog. I was fine with that. Then they spammed my email. I replied saying what a shame that I could never do business with them.
Spamming is what multinational criminals wishing to commit fraud do. You do not want your employer to be grouped with them.
This is what I would do.
I would summarize the consequences of spamming in a one-page written document which ends, I, (Boss's name) fully understand that the above are the consequences of sending unsolicited email, and I take personal legal responsibility for these consequences, including any breaking of laws or loss of money to (name of employer). It is my decision to send unsolicited email, and no-one else's.
Make two copies. Then ask him to sign both. He may refuse, he may not. That does not matter. It should be the thought of taking personal responsibility that should scare him.
If he refuses, make a similar document, ending with something to the effect that you have argued against unsolicited email as strongly as you can, and you take no responsibility if (manager's name) and the other management of (employer) choose not to take your advice. Make two copies. Sign both. Give him one.
Explain that when the SH*T hits the fan, you intend to bring out these documents, just to make sure everyone remembers that your boss knew what the consequences could be.
Then, don't quit right away, but start looking for a new job. Look hard. When you have found a new job, quit, giving the absolute minimum notice that the company policy requires. Include any unused vacation in the 2 weeks notice. Expect them to keep your last paycheck if they think they can get away with it, because your employer is about to self-destruct, so plan your finances accordingly.
After you are safely out, reveal the name of your employer here.
I am not a lawyer.
This is why the labor movement happened.
jhw
A lot of people are saying you should tell him it's illegal. Nah. Why would he believe you over people selling spam software?
No, don't attempt to convince him not to spam at all. Instead, 'plan' for what will happen when it does happen.
I.e., go around asking for plans about what to do when the colo is disconnected and you can't get a new one. Is the company going to increase phone support? Send out more flyers? What's the plan?
Likewise, when email from the company is filtered, do sales people have telephone numbers for all customers? So everyone can operate with an indefinite email outage?
Pointing out what 'might' happen is pointless, and pointing out the illegality of it is pointless when spammers assert otherwise.
No, you decide what will happen and force the company to plan for it and watch as chaos happens as, for example, the sales people want to know what the hell an 'indefinite email outage' is about and why marketing appears to be about to cause one.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
SPAM is bad. But not all emails are spam. I don't see a problem other than ethical about sending out targetted emails to someone. As long as you comply with all the laws and follow all the procedures. why not? That money is going towards your paycheck. Maybe if you can bargain for a raise by doing some reasearch and telling you boss how to send out business email the right way. and when i say right way. the way he won't get taken to jail, sued or be fined by the government.
Just remember to use the BCC line. I think it's hilarious when people send out email lists like that. I would also say to mail it compliantly, but the mail gets filtered if you're Can-Spam Compliant, so just do whatever. There's nothing wrong with a little mail.
Send your boss exactly one unsolicited, 'promotional' email for something you know he's interested in. Ask him the next day if he noticed it, or whether it pissed him off.
This could backfire, of course: he could be that one guy who likes his spam, in which case you should simply try to distract him my signing him up for as many viagra-related websites as possible.
I would have written the program to send all the emails to the bosses.
Suggest that he sign up for a legitimate email marketing service like StreamSend or iContact. He'll learn why you don't do that and it'll look like your helping him actually achieve his goal. After all if his messages don't reach the inbox in the first place whats the point.
Teach him about internet black lists, real-time black lists. Once he gets put on a blacklist for sending spam, his emails will never be able to traverse any spam filter ever again. He will no longer be able to send ANY emails from his company domain, or from his block of IP address'.
Promise him that the moment he pulls the trigger on the spam, he'll wish he hadn't done it. It will be a decision he'll regret for a long, long time.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Actually there is nothing illegal about copying the phone book into a database. In Fiest Publications v Rural Telephone Service the SCOTUS found that a telephone directory was not protectable through copyright.
I find being offended by me offensive.
perhaps he's wanting to send spam, because he thinks it will increase sales -- truth is -- how many customers do you LOSE because they're annoyed at what you've done!?!?
Instead of sending an ad, send a message asking people if they want to opt into your mailing list. This is legal in most countries, as long as that message doesn't contain advertising for any actual product. Also, in that message, make sure you mention the name of the (competing) company that revealed their e-mail address, and explain that _they_ made it public, and that by using the to: and cc: fields, they are exposing their clients to all sorts of spam and e-mail worms.
Spray paint "NOT SPAM I" on the hood of his car, and add a burning automobile tire for the letter "O". That should get his attention.
Just add a rule in your firewall to eat your boss emails.
If it's unsolicited, it's spam.
Period.
I don't care if it _is_ "targeted".
If you're selling something I happen to be looking for, you'll immediately disqualify yourself by sending me spam. I don't care if you're the market leader, the maker of the best thing since sliced bread, or what!
Fscking marketroids.
WHEN are you gonna get the fact that my incoming mail is NOT your advertising billboard?!?
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
Y'know, some of us know game theory. And they know that the only way not to get screwed by businesses like this is to screw them first.
As a consequence, we go out of our way to screw over companies like this and those who work for them, even when doing so causes them loss.
Where did you say you worked again?
Kill the bastard!
Well maybe you should just sign him up to every mailing list you can find. Maybe after he get's spam bombed he'll understand
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
Am I the only one who thinks marketing to these people is a good idea? Maybe not direct spam, but identifying the people from their email and doing a marketing campaign towards them? Sounds like a great idea to me!
Absolutely correct. Unless you have emailed these people previously and they have unsubscribed from your list, there is nothing wrong with going after these people, and in fact if I were in his, or your, position, I would go after them as quickly as possible.
Just be sure that when the email goes out, that it compiled with the can-spam laws (or whatever laws your country has).
If sending an email blast is considered to be spam, what IS the preferred way of cold-calling someone via email? Is this just a no-no? How do you get that first permission to begin marketing to someone? I'm amazed at the 'lists' business that people have grown and sell. Spam sucks. Most of it, fortunately, gets filtered out. Does this mean that we will soon start seeing emails from 'friends' who now start receiving incentives to sell shit to us? It's just as annoying to receive 100s of "join Plaxo" emails! If the boss has received a set of email addresses, how DOES he target the customers (outside of a 'reply-all' gimmick) in a professional and personalized manner and have it be useful, as opposed to detrimental. I've heard a lot of typical 'blaming the dark' comments, and a some examples of being witty, but nothing that is a viable alternative to actually contacting people who are _possibly_ interested in the company's service. How do you still contact the people, but not spam them. Where is the line? Is there a line?
Ask him if Vardan Kushnir was his role model and if he wants to be a hero.
Working with various Real Estate companies we maintained email/address lists of all the competing brokerage houses within our region. Most email blasts would go out to these lists. The lists were managed and maintained usually by our receptionist.
Now fast forward a bit and when one of our newer offices came aboard, they didn't have an existing list for their region. Typically, the easiest way to generate this list is to have your receptionist call each competing office and ask for the most current roster to be sent over. She then retypes it in excel and continues to add and update it every quarter.
However, this newer office didn't want to assign this task to our receptionist, so they would copy/save all addresses not BCC'd to them and create their own lists. This is not spam as all the email lists are brokers or people who have signed up to hear about commercial real estate in their area or are developers and investors who have already worked with some of our companies brokers in the past or presently.
I know the Real Estate business is a bit different, because you have people who want to represent the buyers, sellers and tenants, so it's common to work with competing company brokers on deals - however I know nothing about travel agencies so this tactic may not apply.
Ave Molech Setting
I think the author is projecting their subjective values on the boss. There is nothing immoral about promoting one's business - even if it is spam.
There is nothing legally dubious about a properly formated spam-email.
I hope your boss dies in a very nasty car accident.
No, seriously.
I hope your boss dies in a very nasty car accident.
Those are the kinds of people that we're better off with; people that don't respect borders.
Sales guys that turn everything into a "war" and think they get away with everything.
So, your competitor "accidentally" sent you a copy of their A list, did they? And you're ready to believe that because your competition is... uhh, let me guess... stoopid, are they?
If you look a gift horse in the mouth, you're likely to see a bunch of hoplites grinning evilly back at you.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
egging him on to go for it - Spamming is wrong, but then so is speeding and a multitude of other things I excuse myself for doing each day. Once you've got over the issue of "I'm going to spam", you need to get your sensible hat on. Do it once and they'll not pay much attention, do it many times and add them to your mailing list, they'll get pissy. Sooo. Just mail them a really good one time offer. Whatever you think the competitor normally mails them - just a bit better. FFS do it at cost if you think it'll help. Spam is only spam if they don't want it - give them what they'd obviously signed up for at less - and everybody is happy (apart from the competitor - but if they can't control an email client, they deserve no sympathy).
... and given the number of different tasks I had to do, I have a todo list posted on a corkboard in my (shared) office. The request was from some new sales guy and he wasn't exactly ambiguous about the reasons for it. So, I talked to a couple co-workers about it and everyone (thankfully) agreed that it'd be a bad idea. So, I wrote "ethics" beside it on my todo list and crossed it off.
Later that day (or the next - it was a while ago), one of the bosses came around to add another task. He asked me what I meant by "ethics" and why this project was crossed off. I explained the project and why I ethically couldn't do it. He seemed confused and went to talk to someone else about it. That guy pretty much used the exact same wording as I did. This frustrated this boss, but the project was silently dropped.
In short, mutiny works.
Hmmm... I hate to say it, but if slashdot ever did form a vigilante mob, the only fitting name for it would be Army of Dorkness.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
I'd say its a lost cause... Its like trying to Explain to a Complete Ass why they should not be a Complete Ass... Its Beyond their comprehention.
Beyond and legal or moral arguments, it might be worth commenting on whether he really wants his company's name to be both listed alongside Penis engagement pills, porn ads and bank scams, and disregarded as such after a moments notice.
troodon.net
Quit
In any number of Acceptable Use Policies(AUPs) for Internet service providers and the associated contracts that incorporate them, the sending of unsolicited commercial email is a violation.
You'd have to, or have your counsel check the terms of your firm's contracts with your ISPs, but it's worth citing as a real risk.
My boss wanted me to fax spam a huge list
I refused explaining that it was ILLEGAL
He got another engineer to do it
He got sued - He lost
He's not fax spamming again
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
Google the email addresses individually, learn who their customers are and contact them in another manner, individually. Im sure out of a few hundred email addresses you can actually find a few with other contact details listed somewhere on some website.
Use their list, but use it in another manner.
Consider yourself blessed if you are sneezed on by a dragon and only get wet, it could have been a fireball.
And it's even more creepy. And more shady too, at least by EU's standards (the gathering and use of personal informations is not taken lightly in Europe).
There's nothing like $HOME
I for one will refuse to do businesses with companies that spam me. Spamming is wrong, and I will punish businesses that use the technique by not giving them my money.
Just one "fake" address in the list will allow your competition to see that you've copied their list. You might get into trouble for that as well.
Don't spam them, explain where you got their email address and invite them to join your email list because "You" would never share their email with anyone. Send them out in short bursts of 10-20 each.
Been there, quit that job.
Looking back on my arguments at the time, they were:
I pointed out that spamming was a breach of contract (Up to $5,000 and termination of service)under our current ISP's Terms of Service.
An increase in bandwidth of that magnitude could cause our monthly fee from our ISP to go up. (They wanted to send bi-monthly, 3 page PDF's)
Our current contract with our ISP only allowed for approximately 2Gigs of emails / month (based on current usage). He wanted to spam 2,000+ contacts every 2 weeks. The ISP said we would be bumped up to the next service level to accommodate the increase in bandwidth.
I also pointed out the moral implications of spamming customers that way and offered to create an opt-in mailing list instead. He declined. When I asked him why, he said something along the lines of, "Who wants to voluntarily and knowingly sign up for spam?".
To which I relplied, "So why send it to them at all?"
He said that he didn't like my "No attitude" and if I felt that strongly about it he would accept my resignation.
I tossed my key and card on his desk and walked out.
I found a better job two days later and no, we don't spam our customers.
On the bright side, the spamming caused a 9% decrease in sales in just 2 months. Their ISP fined them $1,500 for a first infraction, threatened to cancel their service if they didn't comply. They also increased their service level which saw their monthly fees go up 50%.
So when a reletive you haven't seen in years finds you and shoots you an email, there a spammer?
When someone sends you an email asking if you want to do dinner, even though you did't ask them to send you said email , they are a spammer?
"WHEN are you gonna get the fact that my incoming mail is NOT your advertising billboard?!?"
Actually, it is.
As long as your email address is accessible to anyone, you are clearly implying consent. I mean, why have one if you don't want people to send you emails.
Clearly if you cared, you would set up a white list.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
demand a large bonus to do it.
Or contact your competitor and let htme know you ahve it, and for a fee you can see that there customers don't find out.
Take cash, when you boss goes to send the email, just intercept it.
Fuck it, why should I always be loosing out on back door deals?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Show him the laws and penalties and walk away. Let him decide if its worth it or not.
Don't get into a discussion of 'morals' if you want to keep your job as they are both irrelevant and relative.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
No, they're a relative I haven't seen in years. The major moral distinction here is that they won't be asking me to buy anything (except possibly their dinner). If a relative I haven't seen in years sends me a flier from his new real estate office or his online V1agr@ store, he's a spammer and will receive no response.
I do want _people_ to send me emails. "People", however, does NOT include advertisers, and if you can't grok the distinction (between people and advertisers) I cannot help you.
In fairness, I'll expand my statement:
"If it's unsolicited, and it's advertising, it's spam. Period."
There. Does that help?
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
Ask him if he likes spam in his inbox, and arrange for some "extra" to arrive in a timely fashion.
If he continues to think it's a good idea, arrange for his Inbox to have a "spam filtering accident" that includes copies to his bosses of all the porn spam he gets.
Where have all the BOFH skills gone?
+++OK ATH