The opt-out from hell

re: The opt-out from hell

PS — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 05:50:15 GMT

If you want spam to stop, start going after the companies that may benefit from it. Like phishing, MOST legit companies don't like their names being dragged into the mud so they often go after the spammers themselves. YMMV of course, I just make sure my work email address is not posted on any site in any way that bots can read it. In addition I have 4 other email addresses: 1 for personal stuff, 2 for honey pot purposes and 1 for my online gaming and forums presence.

re: The opt-out from hell

ColonelBlinky — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:15:38 GMT

here in australia by law everything has to be opt-in so by default i get nothing unless i tick the box, of course the geography of law comes into play here, however, i think spam is here to stay just like junk mail in the letterbox out front of my house, junk mail in the newpapers i get etc etc. We just have to put effort into managing it [block it] as best we can.

for example, when i signed up my hotmail account way back in the mid 90's it was not long before i was getting 20+ junk mails a day, now same account and address 10yrs later i get 1 maybe 2, so a lot has been done in the backend to manage it but i doubt it will ever go away altogether.

p.s. sorry if i posted this twice but my pc borked.

re: The opt-out from hell

nyuknyuk — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:39:01 GMT

The following message was sent to you as a subscriber to third party offers from a TechTarget property...

___________

It's always amazing to me when people sign up for opt-in mailing lists, forget and claim it's spam. You've completely distorted the meaning of the term spam. Spam is unsolicited.

Simply pay attention when you check off subscriber boxes on websites. If you don't know the frequency or scope, then don't sign up for it. Next you'll be saying you're not even a member of that website. Pul-leeze.

re: The opt-out from hell

Steve Riley — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:30:47 GMT

Hm, care to leave a name, Mr/Ms Anonymous Accuser? You bet yer ass I pay attention to those checkboxes on the rare occcasions when I do enroll a membership.

After checking each of their numerous sites, I find that I am somehow enrolled in one of them -- unrelated to my interests. But it's an incomplete enrollment, with incorrect information even. Anybody care to place bets that hundreds of people got "enrolled" without their own permission? And they offer no way to close your account! Shameful.

Fact is, TechTarget is guilty of all kinds of spamming. I routinely receive their dreck, and have availed myself of the "opt out" on every email they send. Yet it keeps coming and coming.

re: The opt-out from hell

David — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:19:28 GMT

TechTarget is a big spammer. Once they get your email address, you never get off their lists, no matter how many times you opt out. If the spam law meant anything, they would have been jailed already.

re: The opt-out from hell

denis bider — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 02:16:19 GMT

Given the international nature of the internet, everyone is bound to eventually start receiving loads of spam, unless you change your address regularly.

Proposals to solve this problem in ways that requires worldwide cooperation are unviable. The only way to solve the spam problem definitely is to adopt a practice whereby you can easily create unique and unpredictable variations on your email address and hand them out to people, and only those variations that you create will work. After doing so, you don't need to opt out of the stuff that people send you in the first place, you just cancel that one address.

The nice properties of this solution are that (1) it gets rid of all your spam, (2) there is no false-positive problem, (3) anyone can start using it today, and it will be effective even if no one else does.

The disadvantage of this solution is that it requires technology that mostly isn't there in most mail servers today. But this is a trivial problem compared to getting laws passed, enforcing them, and getting Russia to comply.

re: The opt-out from hell

viptansex — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:16:23 GMT

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re: The opt-out from hell

SuperSleuth — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 05:19:16 GMT

The corporate owner of SearchSecurity and SearchSecurityChannel (TechTarget) IS one of the worst proprietors of "Auto Opt-In" junk mail I have ever seen. If you sign up for their Information Security magazine you will automatically be subscribed to more than 50 distribution lists. Since you are inherintly subscribed this does not constitute spam (that would be "unsolicited" email). Nonetheless, this constitutes the worst kind of hidden auto-subscription I've ever heard of.

TechTarget should be ashamed of these practices and should review their methods of subscription to their products to a more user-friendly model. Wishful thinking? Let's see!