I just got my first piece of franked spam.
It came from Rep. Madilyn Musgrave of Colorado. (That's her, from a Congressional Web site.)
I don't know how, but my Mindspring address somehow landed on her Congressional e-mail list. The spam is filled with news of her efforts on behalf of Colorado's Fourth Congressional District, about 2,000 miles from my home in Atlanta.
You know what I can do about this spam? Absolutely nothing. That's because the federal CAN-SPAM Act (wonderful name, since it means you can spam all you want) states that I must opt-out of this spam, by hitting a link inside the letter.
The law she passed says her spam is not spam.
If I were an idiot I might just unsubscribe. But everyone with half a brain (which means most people outside Washington D.C.) knows that if you try to unsubscribe from an e-mail list the result will be a lot more e-mail.
If you're pitching something legal, and you follow unsubscribes, you can spam all you want. And I am certain there's something in there, somewhere, that lets Congresscritters spam like mad, and holds them harmless from, say, trading my address with other Congresscritters, and their favorite interest groups, etc. etc.
If the folks at Cong. John Lewis' office want to send me e-mail, that would be spam, too, even though I'm in his district. Lewis hasn't sent me anything, so I like him very much.
But vote against Rep. Marilyn Musgrave at every opportunity. Give money to her opponents. I have no idea what her stands are on issues I care about. I just know she's a spammer.
As to the rest of you, clean up your lists. There are services you can use to audit your lists, like Whitehat. Use them. You should also match all your e-mail addresses to physical addresses, so you don't make the same mistake Rep. Musgrave did.
The bottom line is this. If you're not following opt-in policies you're a spammer, and I don't frankly care what office you occupy.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for over 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the "Interactive Age Daily" for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age, and dozens of other publications over the years.
1. G. Armour Van Horn on July 8, 2005 02:20 PM writes...
Dana, I can't believe you said "If I were an idiot I might just unsubscribe." I thought anyone with a clue had given up this canard years ago. My Quotes of the Day (www.qotd.org) goes out to 10,000 absolutely opt-in subscribers every night, and I religiously process unsubscribes and address changes every night before mailing. But actually, because of this particularly lame advice from many sources, there could be hundreds or even thousands of addresses where the quotes are just going in the trash because they're afraid to unsubscribe.
The fact of the matter is that a lot of folks use e-mail to communicate responsibly, and the network as a whole will benefit if everyone that doesn't want to continue receiving certain messages unsubscribes instead of filtering. In this case I suspect that, as a journalist, you got yourself on a list that is available to PR types and this congress critter figured it was a good list to add. I seriously doubt that she bought one of those "18 million addresses" CDs and started blasting away, and I would expect that her staff understands the need to handle your unsubscribe request properly.
Perpetuating the "don't ever unsubscribe" myth will result in wasteful excess traffic for every service provider and shouldn't be continued. I think your knee jerked just a little quickly this time.
Van
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