Newsletter ArchiveSUBJECT: Spam Laws Welcome to The Internet 800 Directory Newsletter. This week I want to cover a couple of things before we get to ICB's news for the week. Starting off, I would like to thank Thomas R. Cushman for pointing out that we were using the same subject line each week. This made it difficult for the people wishing to save the newsletter. Starting last week, we added the date to the subject line. This way, when you save the newsletter, it now has the date in the file name. This week I received quite a few e-mails asking about the laws regarding Spam. I'm not going to give out any legal advice, that's not my area, but there a web site at http://spamlaws.com that should help answer most of those questions. If you are thinking about sending out e-mail to thousands people that you don't know and that don't know you, let me tell you about one of our customer's experiences. About a year ago, one of our customers received an e-mail promising to greatly increase his web traffic, GUARANTEED, or they would refund his money. Mr. X sent in the $250 fee and waited for the new visitors to come to his site. Little did he know, the method used by this company to increase web traffic was to send Spam (unsolicited email) out to 1 million e-mail addresses inviting then to visit his site. Several things happened at once. First, his web traffic increased as promised. In fact, he also received tons of e-mail, his phone rang constantly and his fax was always busy. There was only one problem with all this activity; they were all complaints about the Spam. While Mr. X did not receive one single order, he did have to change his fax number, cancel his e-mail address and he almost lost his web host. When he complained to the company that started this problem, they would not refund his money because they had fulfilled their promise of increased traffic. Just, remember you should treat your customers and potential customers with the same respect that you would demand. All Contents Copyright ©1995-2001 The Internet 800 Directory Subscribe To The Newsletter: |