Bad Spam, Good Spam: ‘Can Spam’ Changes the Nature of How We Perceive Spam

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Bad Spam, Good Spam: ‘Can Spam’ Changes the Nature of How We Perceive Spam

2/9/2005

By Terry Calhoun

What’s the best part? Well, we can buy all the e-mail lists we want, wherever we get them, and send people unsolicited commercial bulk e-mail as much as we want as long as (a) it’s clear that a commercial message has a commercial message, (b) we include full contact information in the message, and (c) we include an Internet-based ‘opt-out’ link or mechanism in the message. That means, for example, that we can purchase from one of the companies that compile such things, lists of e-mail addresses of–for example–CIOs at higher education institutions, and send them e-mail until they each, individually, ask us to stop.

The really cool thing about this is that it is synergistic with something I have recently noticed about spam; that is, there is so much really bad spam–cheap mortgages, dates with lonely wives, phishing expeditions purporting to be legitimate financial institutions–that what would have been objectionable spam to most of us as few as five years ago is now received, in my in box at least, with a sigh of relief. At least, in those last 200 messages there was something with some limited value to me, whether I asked for it or not.

So, the bottom line for my employer is that we can buy e-mail lists and send out notices about our new books, our regional and international conference, and the like, without concern about whether or not we are conducting illegal spamming under the Can Spam Act. (As long as we follow those few rules and maintain a good opt-out list.) Better, when we send out a notice for a new book that is clearly of interest to many people on campus: A Non-Architect’s Guide to Major Capital Projects, is the latest, even people whose e-mail addresses we purchased are often pleased to receive the e-mail message and they may (often do) turn around and buy the new book. Our message, which was clearly spam half a decade ago, is now not perceived as such by most recipients. (And our statistics bear this out–if we send an unsolicited e-mail message to a selected group of 8,000 people who have not asked to hear from us previously, we tend to get back only one or two opt-out requests. I find that amazing.

If I had room here, or could write with enough clarity, I would wax philosophical at this point about how the Can Spam Act distinguishes between commercial messages (clearly selling something) and transactional messages (delivering something that is due to a purchase or to a dues-paying member according to their membership status). We don’t have to worry at all about the Can Spam Act with regard to messages we can deem and support as ‘transactional’ in nature.

The most mysterious thing to me is how the entire act d'esn’t even address messages which might be outside this dichotomy of commercial/transactional. For example, take this newsletter you got from Campus Technology–IT Trends. If you had not opted-in (subscribed) and we stripped the advertisements out of it entirely, apparently we could send just the factual and knowledge content to as many people we wanted, as often as we wanted, including you– and it would not even be within the parameters of the universe of e-mail messages, according to Can Spam.

So, one way to look at it is the percentage of unsolicited commercial bulk e-mail messages that you get which have actual, real, potentially useful, non-fraudulent content might be about to increase. It certainly will from me! But I see no sign of an overall reduction in the total numbers of spam messages. They are at this point in time apparently inexhaustible and unstoppable. But at least unsolicited commercial bulk e-mail messages ‘mainstream’ organizations can now be legally sent. How d'es that make you feel?

About the author: Terry Calhoun is Director of Communications and Publications for the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP). You can contact him through CT's IT Trends forum by clicking here. View more articles by Terry Calhoun.

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Terry Calhoun, "Bad Spam, Good Spam: ‘Can Spam’ Changes the Nature of How We Perceive Spam," Campus Technology, 2/9/2005, http://www.campustechnology.com/article.aspx?aid=40083

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