When Does Signing Up Become 'Opting In?' 151
AmyVernon writes "This piece from RWW got me thinking about whether, when you sign up for access to a site, you're actually signing up to get a slew of email spam from them. The single opt-in is still really popular, which I've noticed because I often check the box indicating I don't want further emails from a company or publisher. I always assume that giving my actual email address means I'm going to get spam-type emails from whomever. It still surprises me that most people don't. But it does raise a good question: Shouldn't you be able to sign up for something without automatically being signed up for a never-ending stream of 'updates?'"
Re:Protip (Score:4, Informative)
Sign up using a throwaway account that is name-related to the site you are signing up to. That way you will always know who are the ones that send you spam, or sell your address to spammers.
gmail accounts don't care about dots in your email user name - which makes it easy to tell who leaks your email address to spammers. Eg. sign up to gmail and dickhead@gmail.com - then sign up to slashdot as dick.head@gmail.com. All spam addressed to dick.head@gmail.com came via slashdot. NOTE: slashdot doesn't sell email addresses - but I certainly caught companies doing using this technique.
Re:Protip (Score:2, Informative)
Gmail also gives you unlimited e-mail addresses. If you are bob@gmail.com and you sign up for "Site A", you can enter bob+sitea@gmail.com as your e-mail address. Still goes to the same inbox but easily filtered and you can trace who originally gave out your e-mail adress if you give a unique version to every site.
Re:Some managers don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
Not illegal in most jurisdictions as long as there is a pre-existing business relationship. Presumably, if they're customers, then they qualify.
Doesn't mean it's not sleazy and prone to cause problems.