Re: Ironic?

[Rich Kulawiec <rsk () gsp org>]

On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 07:48:48PM -0500, Justin Scott wrote:
> Nope.  Receiving spam and receiving a holiday greeting via e-mail from a 
> business that I have an established relationship with are so far apart 
> that I'm surprised someone could even draw a connection.

Actually, most of these supposed "greeting cards" *are* spam.  Remember:
content is irrelevant.  (Null-content spam, which we see from time to
time, is still spam.)  All that matters is whether it's unsolicited bulk
email, which is the canonical definition of spam.  So unless recipients
have signed up to receive bulk email (by giving their explicit permission)
it's spam.  Note that permission can't be assumed, bought, sold, traded
or transferred: it must be directly acquired from the owner of the
email address.

This means, for example, that any vendor you do business with must not
automatically place you on any mailing list.  They're certainly free to
ask, and obviously many people will respond positively to such a request.
(I do, quite frequently.  Since it is trivially easy for vendors to
ask, there are no valid excuses for not doing so.)  But those which
blithely assume that they may begin bulk mailings without acquiring
prior permission are spammers.  (Note that some particularly egregious
offenders do so even when permission is explicitly denied.)

---Rsk
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