Saturday, November 29, 2008

What's SPAM?

I have a few email lists I use to send articles and notices to various people. They've grown in all sorts of ways, when people ask to be added or email me replying to articles I've written. No, I've never copied other people's "to" and "cc" lists. I always try to use "bcc" only.

On occasion, people ask to be removed from the lists, and I do that.

Now, Israel has instituted a law which takes affect on December 1, of this year that fines people for sending SPAM. As I understand it, SPAM is really the commercial stuff, but the law doesn't distinguish. I don't send out commercial mailings. I don't have a business nor work for one.

So, I'm going to have to send mailings to all of my lists reminding people that they are welcome to unsubscribe.

Since I use yahoo for most of my emails, it's going to take hours, since I'm seriously restricted as to how many recipients per hour. That's to keep the big SPAMMers from using yahoo. I hope people don't harass those with different politics. And I guess that every mailing in the future must have a heading reminding people that they can unsubscribe.

I have work to do.

2 comments:

Jewish Side of Babysitter said...

I'm not sure about Israel law, but in America the e-mails have to have a line on the bottom with a "unsubscribe" link, so that they can stop receiving future e-mails.

Batya said...

thanks for the idea. I can put a reminder in the signature. But my experience, judging by me of course, is that if someone suspects spam they don't read more than the subject or first line at most. That's why I've been putting the unsubscribe info in the title of the letter.