Quote:
Originally posted by RawAlex@May 22 2003, 08:30 PM
AOL has a members agreement that people agree to when they become a member, that includes allowing "offers from AOL and affiliated partners", and you can opt out. THAT ISN'T SPAM! They have the members agreement upon signup to be part of this - it is the ultimate mail list, backed up by a user agreement and such.
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If the AOL members agreement is like most of them, all the "send me" boxes are prechecked. If the user misses that fact (and sometimes it is hard to figure out what those frigging check boxes are doing) or thinks that the boxes must be checked in order to continue (and many agreements also seem that way), then the user ends up opting in unknowingly....
This is deception pretty much the same as any other SPAMMER practice.
Does AOL spam ? Yes, undoubtedly a certain perdentage of their users end up opted in unknowingly.
Do Most large ISP's SPAM ? Yes
Do many large Portal sites SPAM (Yahoo, Iwon etc.) ? Definitely....
Both of the portals I mention here (I have personal experience with these) periodically have sent out new agreements that you have to got to their site and agree to in order to continue service. What they don't tell you except hidden way way down in the fine print is that they have reconfigured your optiona and signed you up for everything unhless you go to a totally different page, that is not linked btw, and reopt out of everything.
Deception is the norm on marketing on the net, whether it be mainstream or adult. If they get your email address by deception, whether you knowingly opted in or not, and then sell it to their "marketing partners", then they are just as guilty of SPAMMING as the guy who rips the emails off during a hack and then sells them....
just imho of course......