Info Manager: IMHO Info Manager: IMHOIDG News reported on the FTC conference that Fred Showker attended last week.
What I found interesting, was that the first item on the agenda was defining spam and how difficult it was to come up with a definition. Some anti-spam advocates said that spam is all unsolicited email and some said that it should be defined only as e-mail that has false subject lines or misleading e-mail headers.
What is amazing, is that when the Internet first got started, everyone was saying that web sites and thus companies would be able to be very specific in their targeting their e-mail to specific customers. What wasn't realized, was that e-mail marketing is so cheap that it isn't necessary to send to only people they know would be interested. Thus we get all this material on products for which we have no use.
Personally, that is my definition of spam. Any e-mail that I didn't request that I have no use for. I think most individuals would agree with me. However I know that marketing companies would disagree with me. (BTW - I work in a marketing department for a major corporation.)
It will be interesting to see how Virginia's new law causes a crack down on spam.
We don't have any problems defining spam, in fact you can read complete definition of "UCE" (spam) as part of the AACUG's ISP Anti-Spam Initiative
Read Fred's 3-Day account of the FTC's Spam Forum in Washington D.C.
Have a great week...
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