Re: But Facebook are not spammers - here's a screenshot

[David M Chess <chess () us ibm com>]

Well, the argument for it (or actually the email it can generate) being 
spam is pretty obvious, presumably?

By pressing I guess it is two buttons on that screen, I can cause a 
generic "come join Facebook!" message to be mailed by some third party to 
everyone in my whatever-it-is address book.

If I upload a list of addresses to some site, knowing that that site is 
then going to send unsolicited mail to everyone on that list, is there 
spamming going on?

I think the answer is "yes".  It's slightly fuzzier who's actually doing 
the spamming (me, or the site that actually sends the mail), but it seems 
pretty clear that there is spamming going on?
 
If I manually send a note to everyone in my address book, saying "sign up 
for service X 'cause I like it!", am I spamming?  I think so.

If I use a third-party web service to do that, am I spamming, or is the 
web service spamming?  Distinction without a difference, I think: we (that 
is, me + the web service) are spamming.  It's a conspiracy!  :)

Now if I only have five people in my addressbook, and I send them all 
email saying "wow you'll love this band" because I think that all five of 
them really will love it, is *that* spamming?  That's so de minimus and 
borderline that I'd say "probably not".  But given how big your average 
facebook user's email address is, and how generic the "Join Facebook!" 
message is, I don't think it's de nearly so much minimus.  The argument 
that it is spam is, at the very least, plausible.

But presumably you disagree?  I'd be interested in hearing which bits you 
disagree with...

DC


_______________________________________________
Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.