Best of the ISP-Lists

Black List, Bully, or Bless?

The pros and cons of unsolicited e-mail promotion will probably be debated as long as there's an Internet. Here are a variety of viewpoints from the wireless ISP community.

[June 18, 2003]

RH kicked off a firestorm of discussion on ISP-Wireless last March when he raised a familiar alarm:

"Keep an eye out for some nice spam from J at [company]. He was nicely black listed from my approved vendors list.

I hate spammers!!"

There was no shortage of reactions, thoughts, opinions, and feelings, as some 90 messages followed.

[BE had a retaliatory approach] "I make a habit of not buying from spammers. I am not sure how much I cost the most recent one, but here is how I treat spammers . . .

The current anti-spam project involves a company that wants to provide me with technical support. He first sent me an unsolicited e-mail. In my first e-mail response, I discovered that he had "seen" my e-mail address on my website. Wrong! It is not there. I have spent a little over two hours calling his toll-free line asking stupid, needless questions. I have had him on the phone calling me for about two hours. I continue to have him research questions and scenarios. I will lead him on until I get tired of it, then mention to him that spammers don't get my business."

[DB was indignant] "You lead a rather pathetic existence, don't you? You waste more of your time getting mad at spam than you do deleting it, or setting up a spam filter. Anything that's free will be abused, so take the good with the bad and get on with your life."

[JB shot back] "Translation: Anyone who objects to having his property stolen and/or abused is pathetic."

[JB had a more conciliatory view] "I don't like spam either (c'mon, just how many male enlargements, septic improvements, Viagra prescriptions, get rich quick schemes can I possibly use?), but I do draw a distinction between solicitations I receive on my business e-mail account that have nothing to do with my business, and those that do (especially if it is sent to the info@ or sales@ for my company)."

[RP chipped in] "We got spammed about two weeks ago. The first instinct is to delete and black-hole them, Thank goodness in this case we didn't; got pricing on antennas I could not believe like $X for 24 dBs and $Y for 19 dBs. [Prices removed by RP after considering that his post looked kinda spam-ish.]

[TD made another comparison] "Admit it, you've gotten a useful SPAM from somebody before. Mild spamming isn't any worse than getting tons of junk postal mail. I can delete an e-mail much more quickly than I can throw an envelope in the trash!"

[EJ challenged this view] "It's far worse. With junk postal mail, the advertiser pays his own way. With spamming, the recipient pays."

[RB took the debate in a new direction] "What is the difference between a spam and a cold call?"

[BE responded] "While I think you really know the answer to this, I will elaborate. Spam is an e-mail sent to a mailing list of contacts that were obtained from sources that were not intended for that purpose—for example, trolling a mailing list or its archives. Cold calling usually involves a list that is generated from directory information. The directory information is published intentionally. Perhaps you don't see a difference; I do."

[SD countered] "With a cold call, the receiver determines how much resources to invest. (I typically invest enough time to request that they place my name and number on their do-not-call list.) Spam dictates that I receive your whole spiel. You are forcing me to invest disk space, bandwidth, and time.

[DS bases his views on practicality] "Cold call = 30 (or more) seconds on the phone with the front desk, then transferred to me, and then at least another 30 seconds to a minute before I realize whether it is useful or not. That means a minimum of 60 to 90 seconds per call. Plus, while on the phone with a cold caller I miss a potential business call

Junk mail = worst of all.
1. Paper waste that I have to put up for recycling.
2. My e-mail inbox is (almost) unlimited so when I take off for a week I just get a bunch of sorted out messages, per-folder, per-subject, by sender, etc
3. My snail-mailbox is limited and fills up with junk mail, so by the end of the week my useful mail ends up on the side of the porch or so.

Spam = least intrusive.. If it doesn't get caught on our mail server it requires less then a second for that delete key and it does not pollute the environment. I would take spam e-mail over cold calls and/or junk postal mail any time."

— End