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Email Harvesting ...
You've all seen them before. Ads telling you that you can earn $1.00 for every email collected. Well, the other day I received one such email, but the person posting to the Safelist forgot to put in the URL for her opportunity, so I emailed her and asked for the URL address. I received a 'prewritten' response with her details entered in a different font throughout the letter. OK I thought. I am dealing with a newbie. I checked out the URL and found that it was an opportunity that promoted the use of their Email Harvester to gather people's email addresses, for bulk mailing purposes, from the free Classified Ad websites. To participate, you paid $1.00 up front and then $10.00 per month. Now I consider Email Harvesting to be an illegal practice, so I emailed her back and sincerely suggested she RUN FOR THE HILLS! I think she must have emailed it to her sponsor to answer, or to the program organizer, because I received one lengthy and abusive email in return! In short, it said that their operation was 'legal' because they always put their Disclaimer at the bottom of all emails that they send out to the gathered addresses. You know, the one that says they comply with the SPAM Laws because they provide a 'Remove Me' option. They also stated that people who post to these free Classified Ad websites agree to allow the other participants to email their offers to them so it makes it 'legal' for their Company to do the same. I responded and told him/her/they, that the SPAM Law that they quote was NEVER passed and therefore CANNOT be used as a justification that what they are doing is legal. I also pointed out, that when I post to the majority of Classified Ad Websites, I do so with the knowledge that I will receive emails back from the Website Owner ONLY and NOT every Tom, Dick or Mary that also uses the service. I also took the opportunity to define SPAM - the receipt of UNREQUESTED emails containing Advertising. If they sent me advertising to my 'harvested' email address, since I HAVEN'T requested it, it would constitute SPAM! I included copies of articles that, in EVERY INSTANCE, linked email harvesting operations with the term SPAM. You know the answer I received in return? They told me NOT to join their Company as I apparently have the wrong attitude to be successful on the Internet! They told me to 'get a life' as I must have too much time on my hands to spend telling them what's right and wrong. If they received any more emails from me, they were going to report me for spamming them! Guess what? I took their advice. There was NO WAY I was EVER going to win the debate, so I took the 'cease and desist' posture. Some people will just never listen. They tend to find ways to justify whatever it is that they are doing, whether it's illegal or not. It's like using the attitude, "Well, if I didn't steal it, somebody else would have." Sorry! NOT ACCEPTABLE!
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Contributor's Note
This article first appeared in my Online Ezine on 7th February 2006. I no longer produce the Ezine.
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