Comments on: Just Leave Me Alone Already

By: Mishandling Your Opt-Outs Can Hurt Your Business « econnectemail.com

Mishandling Your Opt-Outs Can Hurt Your Business « econnectemail.com — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:59:56 +0000

[...] Need a real-life example? Incidentally, Laura Atkins of Word to the Wise just got into this same situation with AT&T who kept sending her emails despite her repeated opting out of their numerous mailing [...]

By: J.D.

J.D. — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:19:18 +0000

It continues to surprise me that every provider of tagged and/or disposable addresses thinks they’re the first to come up with the idea. Tagged addresses have been built into open source software since the mid/late 1980s, and disposable addresses have been available to anyone who owns their own domain name since domain names were invented in the early 1980s.

Now, of course, I have to wonder whether some of those services — particularly the free ones who make all sorts of outrageous claims, and come close to blog spam to advertise themselves — might be scammers.

By: laura

laura — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:57:29 +0000

Something like 10 minute email works fine for companies that I just need an address for, not so much when there is some mail that I want (say, my billing statements) and the company decides to market me to death on the same address.

I love my disposable and tagged email addresses, though. Gives me a lot of freedom to control my mail and know when vendors are not trustworthy.

By: daelene

daelene — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:00:59 +0000

I would suggest using something like the 10 minute mail in cases where you just need a quick verifiable email address. It requires no personal details and is deleted after 10 minutes. Great Idea- wish I had thought of it.

By: steve

steve — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:49:55 +0000

This is the same company that uses their set top boxes to replace the entire screen with adverts during the middle of a programme, and require you to hit “OK” to get rid of the advert.

It’s like web popups, on your TV.

They presumably believe that saturating their existing customers with advertising for their services (in many cases services that the customer already is paying for) in as intrusive a way as possible will benefit them somehow.

I don’t object to the advertising so much as I object to the really badly targeted, really badly implemented advertising.

By: Sundeep Kapur

Sundeep Kapur — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:59:29 +0000

I I have a couple of thoughts, email me and I will send information back. I might ‘incriminate’ myself

By: laura

laura — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 05:54:48 +0000

These are not even remotely transactional, though.

“Enjoy Free AT&T Wi-Fi on Your iPhone”
“TV, Internet & $200 back”
“Keep your life in motion with YELLOWPAGES.COM Mobile for the iPhone”
“Less Work, More Play with myWireless”

Yeah. I don’t think so.

Just to clarify: all the mail is from different AT&T divisions, they haven’t sold or traded my address to other companies. But each time I try to unsubscribe it’s a different process through a different ESP. We’ll see what happens when their 10 days are up.

By: Sundeep Kapur

Sundeep Kapur — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 05:35:33 +0000

Check their privacy policy – it states that you may be receiving transactional messages. However, there was an issue a couple of months ago where ATT didn’t remove a number of un-subscribes and kept hitting them up repeatedly.

By: Anton Panaitesco

Anton Panaitesco — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:54:50 +0000

I totally agree with you: so called list exchange is sometimes even more frustrating than 100% illegal SPAM sent through zombie PCs, I am not expert on US legislation (I do know a little about the CANSPAM act), but in France this kind of practices are very borderline but kind of legal…
This is a plague and I ALWAYS tell my clients to stay very far from such practices.