Stretching the language

[rconner]

Got a note today from the American Water Works Association inviting me to a seminar. It was sent to my personal address (not my work address, which gets a lot of this stuff). My guess is that the addy was somehow taken from my professional engineering registration records, which are publicly accessible on the web. While unsubscribing, I noticed the following info on the unsub page:

"You have already been opted-in to the system"

I'm not quite sure I understand the nature of an "opt in" process that doesn't actually involve the opted-in party in the decision. Sorta like saying "we opted you in to buy us a pizza."

My guess is that someone told their remailer (Blue Hornet?) that "opt in" was good, so they made sure to include the term in their mailings.

-- rick

[Farelf]

..."You have already been opted-in to the system" ...

Yes, definitely an attempt to lend the whole data-mining and utilization thing a spurious legitimacy. "Opt" requires the exercise of personal preference, there is no doubt, calling the process "opt-in" without the individual preference being made is probably deceitful/spammerly, not just illiterate. As if illiteracy is not enough with which to contend. Still chuckling about the slogan I recently saw in Eisenstein's film, October 1917 - "Long live the Provisional Government!" (Да здравствует Временное правительство!). Maybe it changes in translation - and yes, it is reliably recorded that was an actual slogan of the era.

[rconner]

By way of followup, my e-mail to Blue Hornet elicited the following response:

Hi Richard, thanks for sending this over. If your address was scraped or harvested from a website, public database, or similar, you're correct - that would be a violation of our policies.

We'll follow up with this customer to determine what exactly happened and ensure they do not continue this sending behavior.

So, at least we might conclude that Blue Hornet at least answers complaints politely, which ranks in status somewhere above chopped liver these days.

-- rick

[Farelf]

...So, at least we might conclude that Blue Hornet at least answers complaints politely, which ranks in status somewhere above chopped liver these days.

My word it does - and their Position on spam statement pushes all the right buttons. Knujon claimed to have had them suspended in 2007 according to dra007 - http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?...ost&p=54959 - so there are evidently some with a more critical opinion.