Becoming a spammer

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The office secretary comes to me yesterday. "I've got a list of 200 or so people, and I need to send this email to everyone on it," she says.

So, I go away, read the email, read the list. The list is a list of addresses of random companies in the Far East that our PR consultant has harvested from God Knows Where. The email is your usual "Hello, here's an advert" random spam.

You know the random spam you get from companies in China wanting to sell you random crap? Well, it looks like our PR has decided it would be a good idea to start doing that the other way round.

What's the best way to explain to the Board: "Um, doing this isn't a good idea, because we'll end up getting blacklisted and not being able to send emails to people who are already customers"

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Thursday, 30 March 2006 06:15 (twenty years ago)

I think that is the best way to explain it. What's your question?

― Gilbert O'Sullivan (kenan), Thursday, 30 March 2006 06:40 (twenty years ago)

If it's 200 people then you're not going to get blacklisted for it, especially if the recipients are outside of USA/Europe/Australia.

― Andrew (enneff), Thursday, 30 March 2006 06:44 (twenty years ago)

Well, who should I explain this to first, then? My boss? The secretary who is trying to do it? The director whose name the email is going out in? The PR consultant who told us to do it?

(I'm the one expected to tell the secretary how to do it. If we do get blacklisted, I'll be the one expected to fix it immediately)

(Really, of course, it was more of a rant than a question)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Thursday, 30 March 2006 06:44 (twenty years ago)

If it's 200 people then you're not going to get blacklisted for it, especially if the recipients are outside of USA/Europe/Australia.

Maybe not - but if it *does* happen, I'll be the one expected to sort the mess out. I definitely want to be able to say "I explained the risks to you beforehand".

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Thursday, 30 March 2006 06:45 (twenty years ago)

Well, who should I explain this to first, then? My boss? The secretary who is trying to do it? The director whose name the email is going out in? The PR consultant who told us to do it?

I dunno. You work there, not me. This is not a universally applicable situation.

― Gilbert O'Sullivan (kenan), Thursday, 30 March 2006 06:47 (twenty years ago)

I'm sorry to dismiss your dilemma so blithely. I know it sucks. Believe me, I know. All you can do is try to be diplomatic. And if being diplomatic doesn't convince anyone, well, you've done all you can do. It's not your company, so it's nothing to get all up in arms about.

― Gilbert O'Sullivan (kenan), Thursday, 30 March 2006 06:55 (twenty years ago)

You need to say "for fuck's sake" to someone, ideally in writing (e-mail) as well as verbally. Then when it all goes tits up you can smugly say "HA HA I TOLD YOU SO" and then be fired for your attitude.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Thursday, 30 March 2006 09:11 (twenty years ago)

Apparently the PR people already know of the risks, but they are positive that the list they gave us consists solely of people who attended two particular trade shows, and ticked the box to say they were willing to let their addresses be passed on. So, the directors are happy. I've just finished writing a mass-mailing program, and have started sending the emails out.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Thursday, 30 March 2006 09:34 (twenty years ago)

It's like The Apprentice!

xpost

― ken c (ken c), Thursday, 30 March 2006 09:35 (twenty years ago)

i used to work for a company that produced enormous databases of "media outl;ets" so that PR people could spam them with press releases... the idea was to put loads of complex metadata on each journalist/publication so that you could complex searches and stuff to target the correct people. but guess what! with emailed press releases, it makes virtually no difference whether you send 100 emails or 10000, so the PR people generally just sent the whole lot a bunch of crap. when i spoke to the journalists they would complain about getting 100s of emails a day of rubbish and yet they didnt seem to twig that the majority of those were as a result of their name being stuck in our product.

some silly buggers used to send out books for review rather than emails, but on the same principle, ie not bothering to check properly whether they were being sent to the right people

― ambrose (ambrose), Thursday, 30 March 2006 11:33 (twenty years ago)

it makes virtually no difference whether you send 100 emails or 10000

It does make a big difference - to the server. It doesn't make any difference to the people sending it; they don't see what effect it has on the computers behind the scenes.

I was sensible enough to put a rate-throttling option into my own mass-mailing program. It's currently sat sending out one email every five minutes - it will take it a couple of days to get through the whole recipient list, but at least our normal email service won't suffer.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Thursday, 30 March 2006 11:37 (twenty years ago)

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