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At last,
the contents of Aardvark's "million-dollar ideas" notebook
are revealed for all to see!
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As I discussed a week or so ago, it's important for websites to have a clear
and prominently displayed privacy policy, and a growing number do.
In theory, checking a site's privacy policy before submitting any data such
as your email address or phone number, should give you peace of mind as to
exactly what will be done with that information. And, perhaps just as
importantly, it should give you confidence that you're not going to be spammed.
But what do you do when websites don't do what they say?
Take
this privacy statement
for example -- especially the bit that says "Computer-NZ does not support 'spamming',
unsolicited mailing or the sale of email mailing lists or address lists"
You'd think, based on that statement, that it would be pretty safe to contact
the operators of this site by email right?
Well I'm afraid that's not the case, and the site certainly seems to whole-heartedly
endorse spamming as a viable marketing technique.
You see, back in May I sent the site's operators a message using the address
on this page.
Note that nowhere on the page does it say that contacting the site will
subscribe you to any newsletters or other regular marketing material.
However, yesterday I received an unsolicited 35K HTML-formated email from
Computer-NZ.com which started: "Welcome to Computer-NZ and the second
newsletter from New Zealand’s newest computer web site..."
Next up it invited you to
spam a friend
by subscribing them to this newsletter too.
NOWHERE on the newsletter is there any information on how to opt-out from
this junk email and there appears to be no opt-out facility available on
the website either.
So, if there's someone you really dislike -- just sign them up to this list
and the website that proudly claims "Computer-NZ does not support 'spamming',
unsolicited mailing or the sale of email mailing lists or address lists"
will spam the hell out of them with no apparent way of stopping it.
Single-opt-in mailing lists are bad enough, but one that actually solicits you
to sign up others to a list that provides no opt-out facility is inexcusable.
I strongly recommend that you avoid this site like the plague -- and next time
you read a privacy policy, just remember that just because you saw it on the
Net doesn't mean it's true!
Want more porkies?
Check out the statement "We may be a new site (See our Press Releases) but
we have plenty of Internet expertise and experience behind us" on
this page.
So, what are we to believe? Are they lying when they say they have plenty of
experience and therefore can we forgive their misunderstanding of what spamming
really means? Or perhaps they do have the experience claimed and it's their
privacy policy which is a lie.
Whichever way you look at it -- I don't think the disingenuous statements and
behaviour associated with this site will reflect at all favourably on those
companies and products which are also represented there.
Avoid, avoid -- and spread the word!
Before someone emails me to suggest that I'm perhaps being a little harsh
on the operators of this site -- I should remind them that I have a
zero-tolerance policy in respect to spam and there is absolutely NO EXCUSE
for running a no-opt-out, anyone-can-opt-you-in mailing list like this site
offers. And people with "plenty of Internet expertise and experience"
can hardly claim they didn't know this kind of thing was unacceptable, can they?
Well that's my rant -- but what are your thoughts?
Send me your feedback, and don't forget to select
"For Publication" if you want to share it with Aardvark's readers.
Aardvark also makes a summary of this daily column available via XML using
the RSS format. More details can be found
here.
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