A few months ago I got email from Staff of Norman Rockwell Museum of Vermont, to an addresses scraped off one of my websites. At the bottom it says:
You are receiving this email because you have ordered from us, or emailed us in the past. We take your privacy seriously,and promise never to give your personal information to any other company.
Most people probably wouldn’t know that for the lie it is, as they don’t have special addresses on their websites. But in this case, I know it is a lie. I know I have never ordered from the Norman Rockwell Museum of Vermont. I know that laura-web is an address up on a website. It’s not used to send mail. It’s not used to purchase anything.
“You opted in to receive mail” is one of the oldest spammer lies out there. I always discourage clients from using wording like this. If the client doesn’t have enough information to fill in the blanks “you ordered from us in October” or “you signed up in June” then there isn’t really any reason to add it in. If the user doesn’t remember ordering from them, then they’re going to look like a spammer.
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Legitimate e-mailers can easily change the text to say when they ordered or signed up, or when and what site they signed up with.