DMA to Control Spam by DMA Members

SiliconLawyer writes: "The Direct Marketing Association, the major U.S. tradegroup for companies using direct marketing techniques, will reportedly issue guidelines for how its members may and may not use e-mail as a marketing tool. Hopefully, this will influence other marketers toward more responsible use of e-mail. Details are on CNET here."

The Direct Marketing Association?

[penguin_punk]

anything named The Direct Marketing Association should be sent directly to /dev/null

Self-Moderation

[ewomack]

Won't this be a little like the wolf looking after the chickens?

"We are still going to spam, but we wil spam nicely."

Spam is Spam is Spam!

Ya right

[sllort]

This has to be a hoax. Next thing I know you'll be posting a story about how Microsoft is going to "specialize in computer security".

Har de har har.

oh yea

[niekze]

If you'd like more information, please send an e-mail to [e-mail].

We promise this information will be kept private amongst are bajillion members and will not be shared with anyone else that doesn't politly ask.

Acronym silliness

[Mr_Matt]

Hmm...Direct Marketing Association...DMA. What exactly do they represent? Spammers, who uniformly sell crap. Thus, they could be the Direct Marketing (of) Crap Associat - thereby becoming the DMCA!

Two evil entities, two similar acronyms. Coincidence? I think not. :)

It's still not clear...

[ekrout]

It's still not clear to me how Direct Memory Access is going to keep my inbox spam-free. I mean, will hard drive manufacturers stop the CPU-less transfer of data from C:\ or /mnt/hda1 if they detect such strings as "You've already won", "Free trial offer", or "Wet sex"?

Re:Self-Moderation

[Anonymous Coward]

These are people who use my bandwidth that I pay for to sell their product.

As I read this I realized that I was wearing a t-shirt with the Reebok logo on it. I paid money to advertise for them...

Spam control

[archnerd]

Two ideas for handling spammers, inspired by User Friendly:
1. Next time you get a "501 compliant spam" that starts off with something like "This is not unsolicited bulk e-mail. Buy me.", flood their server with messages stating "This is not a denial of service attack."

2. The following poem seems to work well:
I got your mail and wrote you back
just so that you'd have no doubt
that if you spam me ever again
your router shall cease to route

Preview of the guidelines...

[jmorse]

I can just see those guidelines now:

• When indiscriminately sending unsolicited email, please be sure to spoof the mail headers so the mail can't be traced back to you.
• When mail-bombing the hotmail.com domain, please refrain from sending mail to [e-mail] or your software liscences may suddenly expire.
• Please pre-pend the subject lines of all unsolicited email with the ADV: prefix...(uncontrolable laughter ensues)
• When providing a fake "remove" link in an email, be sure that the address doesn't implicate your company or the DMA. [e-mail] usually works best.
• When marketing to a technically-inclined demographic, refrain from inserting the phrase "ALL YOUR PRIVACY ARE BELONG TO US" in the email. It's not only distatsteful, it's downright cliche [wired.com].

It is funny...

[UberOogie]

When I read this, I feel exactly the same as when Microsoft said they were going to focus more on security...

What do you think that means?

Spam can be amusing...

[Junta]

I mean, my wife gets e-mails telling her to enlarge her penis and I get e-mail telling me to enlarge my breasts....

Hell, I LOVE Amazon.com "spam"

[Gannoc]

They only send me stuff I would want to see, I get it no more than maybe 1-2 times a week, and it often includes a $5 off coupon or something.

Most of my bad spam is for absolute random crap or porn, with the same old line on the bottom informing me that the reason I'm being informed about all these Internet Cum Sluts is because I specificly requested to be spamed on their site or one of their partner's sites.

Plus, the latest thing is dating the message 3-4 days back, so you have to scroll back on your inbox to read/erase the spam. It stops the instant deletes by hiding it.

Re:Here's an idea

[SpacePunk]

Tell ya what. How about we form a cabal of system administrators with a chapter in every city to pay spammers a 'visit' for some 'wall to wall counseling' every time spammers send out a run.

Hells Administrators! or Hells Geeks!