Publicly listed email ID?

WTF is that? I get a ton of spam daily. I painstakingly mark it SPAM or delete or unsubscribe. But then I got this with one such mail sent to me by pr@metaplume.com (wtf, again!):

This email with sent to you because you have a publically listed email address and having looked at information available about your interests, we decided you might be interested in our newsletter. If this is not the case, please excuse the interruption to your day and let us know that you would prefer not to receive our newsletter in the future.

I don’t think the above notice absolves them of their wrongdoing – SPAM! And what the hell is a publicly listed email ID? Is there a directory that’s publicly accessible? Can I see it?

And, yes, dear metaplume.com, I don’t want to say “Please unsubscribe me” in my unsubscribe mail (seriously, no one-click unsub?). I want to use much harsher language. Words starting with f and m and the likes you probably didn’t know exist. Because you made me rant.

I run a digital agency. We send mailers on behalf of clients and for ourselves. We painstakingly maintain a subscriber list and guard it with our lives. We’ve had offers where one client wanted to send to another’s list. We refuse. All subscribers on all our lists are opt-in. This choice is given to them at the time of registration. Or they can opt-in later.

In the above case, I don’t even know what metaplume.com is (I did subsequently check it out and looks like an SEO farm of articles). Sounds like a polluting company. So far, they’ve lived up to their name on the Internet. Not cool.

10 years of erections and frustration!

10 years ago, Pfizer launched Viagra. The answer to many a man’s woes. It also became the stuff of spammers’ wet dreams. One can well imagine a spammer getting up in the middle of the night all excited and sending out viagra mail. Such was the effect even the name had on humanity.

And this video created to celebrate 10 years of erection (sic!) of viagra is very well done.

It perhaps also alludes to the fact that there was a time when spam was falling down. Losing it’s strength. And then came viagra. And spam once again rose from the depths of ignominy and reached dizzying heights of success ejaculating at the rate of millions per day.

Prost!

Video via David Airey.