What a couple of weeks it’s been! We’re having the kitchen refurbished so I have plumbers, builders and painters waltzing in and out interrupting me every five minutes. I’m keeping the aspirin close at hand and perhaps it is the added stress that is making me particularly irritated by spam again.
For a very short while spam seemed to become less annoying. Sure, I was getting a handful every day but they were easy to deal with. Alas, that little vacation was far too brief and spam seems to have come back with a vengeance.
Much to my amusement I still get relentless messages from “Tonya” at Cyberfoxes (an incredibly silly name) who, after who knows how long, is still offering to “renew” my membership to her, ahem, service.
I keep wondering if there’s some kind of strategy behind this ridiculous pitch? Perhaps it is something cunning like the company I heard about that was offering some kind of porn, and two weeks after getting the customer’s money they would write back saying federal regulations prohibited them from sending the material by post so they were enclosing a refund check. But the check was much larger than usual, fluorescent pink, and the payee was a concatenation of perversions that I can’t list in a nice journal such as this. The company counted on the fact that most people would be too embarrassed to cash the check. But I digress . . .
One thing I am seeing now is a lot more American business spam. I’ve complained before about this and I am still amazed at being involuntarily subscribed to some U.S. company’s stream of inchoate marketing drivel about products or services simply because they can.
What is even more aggravating are the companies that send you what are simply ads over and over again. I’ve talked with many companies that were simply naïve and didn’t understand the issues involved, but there are a few out there that simply don’t want to play by the rules.
For example, one company in this category is Pixelfish, which offers to produce video for Web sites. Since the first of this year it has spammed me 11 times with messages that aren’t CAN SPAM compliant. I have followed the unsubscribe instructions and I have sent the company messages. Will they take me off the list? Nope.
I was curious as to whether Pixelfish simply didn’t understand the issues of spam. I e-mailed Dave Brewer, the name on the last spam I got, and the CEO, John McIntyre, and got no reply, so, out of curiosity, I telephoned and spoke to Brewer who was rude and then hung up on me.
Now I know that I can just delete Pixelfish spam when I get it, or even block the company altogether, and if it was the only U.S. company doing this sort of thing it would be no big deal. The trouble is it isn’t and it is a big deal.
Here’s my question: What do we do about companies that 1) not only don’t care, but 2) are willing to be downright aggressive about not caring? I don’t think son of CAN SPAM is the answer simply because enforceability is impossible.
I don’t know the answer but I know that ignoring the problem isn’t the right approach. Now please excuse me, the plumber has a question and I need more aspirin.
Gibbs is self-medicating in Ventura, California. You can contact him at mgibbs@gibbs.com as long as you’re not spamming.
