Yet another reason to Hate AOL

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:V5kFc.15773$Oq2.9641@attbi_s52...
In my experience, the "unsubscribe" button in many emails only validates
your email address -- and triggers even MORE email!

I think that's why people are so hesitant to use it.

I think his point is that these people are too stupid to understand that
they asked for the email that arrived, and that there would be only a
benefit to them in using the unsubscribe procedure given.

Yes, spam mail also uses a bogus unsubscribe procedure in order to fool
people into validating their email address. But that doesn't mean that
people should ignore a legitimate procedure listed in legitimate email.

Pete

I think his point is that these people are too stupid to understand that
they asked for the email that arrived, and that there would be only a
benefit to them in using the unsubscribe procedure given.


I sign up at (say) BestBuy to get their monthly specials via Email. Three
weeks later (and about a hundred or two spams later) I get an Email from
announcing special sales (and having links with
redirect parts) at BestBuy and having an unsubscribe link that goes to
.

Is it really from Best Buy?

Probably not. But maybe. Retailers are not very bright either.

Jose



--
(for Email, make the obvious changes in my address)

On 03 Jul 2004 14:19:56 GMT, Teacherjh wrote:

I sign up at (say) BestBuy to get their monthly specials via Email. Three
weeks later (and about a hundred or two spams later) I get an Email from
announcing special sales (and having links with
redirect parts) at BestBuy and having an unsubscribe link that goes to
.

Is it really from Best Buy?

check the source (sic!) from the mail. Even better: don't display mails in
HTML and chose plain-text over HTML whenver possible.

what you are talking about is "phishing"

Probably not. But maybe. Retailers are not very bright either.

most of the users are too stupid to go online. you can see the result in
your inbox/spamfilter/etc.

#m
--
Michael Moo Fahrenheit 9/11:
http://www.fahrenheit911.com/

"Teacherjh" wrote in message
...
I sign up at (say) BestBuy to get their monthly specials via Email. Three
weeks later (and about a hundred or two spams later) I get an Email from
announcing special sales (and having links with
redirect parts) at BestBuy and having an unsubscribe link that goes to
.

Is it really from Best Buy?

Probably not. But maybe. Retailers are not very bright either.

Unfortunately, that email might *have* been from BestBuy. I received a
similar sort of advertising from my bank, filled with URLs that linked back
to some third-party site. None linked to my bank.

I contacted my bank to ask them if the email was legitimate, and IT WAS,
amazingly enough. They had hired some company to handle their advertising,
and all of the web traffic goes through that company's domain, rather than
through my bank's domain.

I explained to them why email representing them needed to have links to
THEIR web site, not someone else's. I'm not sure if they got the concept
though. I had myself removed from their advertising mailing list, so I
haven't gotten any email from them again.

Pete