Slashdot Mirror
Opting Out Increases Spam?
J. L. Tympanum writes "I used to ignore spam but recently I have been using the opt-out feature. Now I get more spam than ever, especially of the Nigerian scam (and related) types. The latter has gone from almost none to several a day. Was I a fool for opting out? Is my email address being harvested when I opt out? Has anybody had similar experience?"
Is my email address being harvested when I opt out?
Yes.
You've validated to the spammers that your email address is being actively read, and that you actually READ spam. You have confirmed to them that you are an excellent use of their resources.
1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
If spammers will not honour our private property rights by stealing our bandwidth and mail server ressources, what makes you think that they will honour requests not to be spammed again?
Worse, "opting" out confirms that the e-mail address the spam has be sent to is valid!!!
You never opt-out of spams, you LART their upstreams until they have no more connectivity.
Exactly. If this is a newsletter that you've opted in to, then you can safely opt out.
If you didn't opt-in in the first place what makes you think they're going to act faithfully with an opt-out request?!
All that opting out does in those circumstances is prove that your address is an active one, and that makes it loads more valuable, so they'll sell it on to their spammers as a premium "active email address!
As someone who does responsible e-mail marketing, please let me make a distinction between that and spamming.
If you are getting notices to enhance your johnson or "Che@p drug$" or whatever, DO NOT use the "opt out" link. It confirms your e-mail address is functional. In fact don't open them at all. Report them as spam and help your ISP improve their filters.
HOWEVER, if you are receiving e-mail marketing you just don't want anymore--like say the daily deal e-mail from Expedia*--please use the opt-out link to cancel your subscription. Deleting them won't stop the flow, and marking them as spam hurts deliverability reputation, making it harder to get them to people who actually want them.
Perhaps I'll get modded down for saying this, but e-mail marketing can be done responsibly and is a big part of many legitimate businesses. I think this sometimes gets lost in the War On Spam.
* I don't work for them, this is just an example of an e-mail marketing that I know I get.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
marketing from an otherwise legitimate company, opting out will work, but for spammers it just makes things worse. Spammers count on two things, that they just need a tiny percentage to respond to their solicitations, and that the rest of us will ignore it. Once a year I make a point of researching the complete header of spam and reporting them to their ISP and any law enforcement agency that has jurisdiction. They are engaged in fraud in the traditional sense of the term, so are violating existing laws. They are counting on the rest of us to just delete them and not lodge a complaint.
Spamming is not, and has never been a freedom of speech issue; it's a property rights issue. The spammer has no more right to use my equipment than they do to spray paint their message on my garage door.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I am not from the US and cannot see a connection between freedom of speech for people and businesses having the right to say or do anything at all.
Freedom of speech for people is undoubtedly a cornerstone of a free (civilised) society. What has that got to do with the right of even a legitimate company to say something? Freedom for business is a good thing to but as soon as they trample on freedoms of human beings, that should be very closely examined!
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Simple... even from a "brute force" zombie spammer's perspective, having a list of guaranteed active mail addresses that are actually read will result in a lot more hits than misses. By opting out to non solicited spam from a "hostile" source and confirming the account is active and has someone actually reading junkmail in the process, one only makes the spammers' job easier. Also, your email address increases in value when being sold inbetween spammers. Effectively, you make the A-list among spammers. Having an opt out bit to catch the most naive users would be an investment so to speak. Then again, as you say not all spammers do this.