The psychic and the not-really-opt-in

I’ve been getting a continual stream of spam from a psychic. I blogged about it a few months ago, and even had a call with the psychic’s ESP. None of that seemed to matter. Every few days I’d get another ad for psychic candles, or recording services or whatever. It wasn’t mail I could easily filter, and every time I’d get it I’d growl and dump it in my junk folder.
Yesterday, I received another mail from her. The subject line is “list opt-in verification.” Really? Could she really be actually confirming her list? Actually asking if I want to continue receiving mail?

I’m sending this to you because everyone gets so many impersonal emails and I want to be sure you do want to receive the Tori Hartman Newsletter monthly. If you would like to continue to receive news from me, simply click the VERIFY link below.
Unsubscribe below will remove you permanently.
Thank you for your time and attention.
With Love,
Tori
You are receiving this email because you are currently subscribed to the distribution list ‘TH Marketing List 4.5.10’.

So far, so good. It seems she’s attempting to weed out folks from her list. But if you read below the fold, you find a paragraph that contradicts the entire mail.
The bottom paragraph says:

As part of our regular list maintenance procedures, we are requesting verification that you still want to receive our emails. Verification is optional. You will still continue to receive emails from this list if you choose not to verify your subscription unless you unsubscribe below.

Um. What? Why bother with a verification run? I don’t get it when companies do this. If you are going to keep mailing me no matter what I do, then why are you bothering me? This is the height of irrelevancy.
I know other companies have done this, but I don’t understand the point. If you aren’t going to pay attention to the non-response why are you asking the question?
Not only that, this mail doesn’t comply with CAN SPAM.

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Social network spam

I’ve been seeing more and more social network spam recently, mostly on twitter. In some ways it’s even more annoying than email spam. Here I am, happily having a conversation with a friend and then some spammer sticks their nose in and tweets “myproduct will solve your problem!”
It’s happened twice in the last week.
In most recent example, I was asking my twitter network for some advice on pasta making. I’ve made pasta a few times, but it’s never been exactly right. Not having an Italian grandmother to ask, I was looking for someone with experience in pasta making to answer a few questions. I was having an ongoing conversation with a friend who was helping me troubleshoot my problems. He gave me his recipe to try to see if that would work better.  I thanked him profusely and replied that I would give it a try but probably not tomorrow because it was accounting day and those tend to run late. Someone replied to that tweet suggesting I try some random accounting software to make my accounting easier.
Just… No.
Interjecting product ads in a conversation may be the “acceptable” and “best practice” way to market through social networking. But, I can promise that you’re no better the guy who interrupts conversations at parties so he can hand out business cards for his affiliate program selling herbal male enhancement drugs.
Don’t be That Guy.
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