Spammed by Screwfix?

[Mike P]

Ooops! my mistake, the thread goes back so far I forgot it was a letter and not an email, I stand corrected.

Mike P

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Mike P writes

Second what? It's conventional to quote some of the post you're replying to, so as to provide context.

[Phil]

big snip

therefore not be afforded the new protection.

Screwfix have an interesting interpretation of the legislation here. It is true that the legislation is mainly aimed at private email and that companies won't be allowed to email individuals unless they have opted in. Business email addresses can be contacted as long as the email is related to the business that has already taken place between the two parties and a specific opt-in is not required, but only if those businesses were given an opt-out option when their details were first collected and chose not to opt out.

Phil

[Mike P]

What's up, can't you work out that I was referring to the sub-thread directly above me?, just like this one!

Mike P.

[Owain]

"Suz" wrote | "Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)" wrote | > > Don't suppose Mr MacNamara put his email address on his letter did he? | > You would be correct in that assumption. | Bet you a tenner it is [e-mail] . That's the way a lot of | major companies set up their addresses

If it's not [e-mail] it'll probably be [e-mail] or [e-mail]

Owain

[Huge]

Not everyone uses the same kind of newsreader you do. Not everyone reads news the same way you do. Not everyone has their newsreader configured the same way you do.

Please include some appropriately quoted and located context.

[usenet]

More to the point how do you differentiate 'business' and 'individual' E-Mail addresses? It suggests a total misunderstanding of E-Mail and the internet if TPTB think there is an actual difference.

[Mike P]

But Nigel Tomlinson nor yourself referred to the quote in the original message of this sub thread or for that matter the subject of the whole post.

Don't worry about it, life is too short.

Mike P.

[Dave Plowman]

Not all newsreaders support threading, and not all like using it.

[David Hearn]

Well, I have a work email address and a private email address. When I leave this company, I lose my work email address but keep the private email address. Quite a clear differentiation between them in that respect - though I agree, from Screwfix's point of view, all email addresses are possibly business as they are customers and have a business relationship. Also, knowing automatically which email address is private and which is business isn't generally possible (can't assume .co.uk is just business). I suspect there will be a new box to tick on signup forms "Is this a business email address?".

D

[usenet]

Er, yes, but no possible way to differentiate by looking at the address. How are senders of unsolicited mail supposed to find out whether an address is a 'business' address or an 'individual' address? Not to mention that I'm not convinced that a your work E-mail address is necessarily a business E-Mail address, if it's something like ' [e-mail]' then it's still an individual being addressed, apparently. Similarly I might perfectly well decide that my personal/individual address is going to be [e-mail], is that an individual address or a business addres?

[Huge]

*plonk*

[Mike P]

If they don't know what the subject matter for the post & thread is about then don't pass comments.

Life sucks eh!

Mike P.

[John Rumm]

True - but there in resides the difficulty - as this thread illustrates, many of us have slight variations in *our* definitions of spam...

Clasification of the obvious stuff (pils, enlargement/reduction of body parts, phishing, hot young teens, 419 etc) is easy and most people agree.

Personally I don't class email from the likes of Screwfix or other companies that I have an ongoing commercial relationship with as spam. Obviously some people do.

(If I ask them to stop sending email - and they fail to do so after a reasonable period - then I may class it as spam).

I suspect that if we could deal with the stuff that is universally thought of as spam - the slightly grey area commercial email left would be far less of an issue.

[Tony Bryer]

No, the difference is that if Screwfix (or other reputable company) send me an email they send *me* *one*, and then probably once a month at most. The spameisters blast them out to valid and invalid addresses alike: generally three or four identical ones end up on my machine and they are only the ones I actually see. I did have my mail configured to bounce all invalid @sda.co.uk mails (mainly to put customers who had entered a typo like [e-mail] on notice that they had done something wrong) but my ISP asked me to change this as the bounces were overloading their mail server - probably because having a three letter domain (all three letter combinations are valid AIUI) people go for dictionary attacks. Now of course because they are blackholed rather than bounced the senders will assume they are valid addresses. I have no idea how much traffic is generated this way but this is the problem, not the likes of Screwfix.

And perhaps I am "a drooling retard" but my own guess is that anti-spam laws are likely to be as effective against the people who mass mail this stuff as speed cameras are against really dangerous drivers and Part P will be against the real cowboy electricians.

[Dave Plowman]

You carry on being the odd one out. Do you drive on the right hand side of the road too?

[Mike P]

This really gets up your nose doesn't it.

Mike P.

[Grunff]

Not just his nose.

*plonk*

[Jerry.]

What are you talking about, certainly not the subject line, and are you replying to Dave Plowman or another person who's post has not shown up on my server ?...

Don't show your utter ignorance, take a bit of advice from people who know how Usenet works.

[Jerry.]

You really are a man who like abusing himself in public !