It seems while the experts are meeting to figure out how to stop spam, the spammers are exploiting new ways to spam. This morning my mailbox had over 100 messages with either the subject “market report” or “eviction notice.” What headers I checked showed this was from a botnet, sent to dozens of addresses at my domains.
What this disclaimer means?
You are receiving this email because you have a customer relationship or have opted-in to an email list managed by the Emailing Entity listed below. This email was not sent to you by the company or website identified in the offer above, for which we have a separate business relationship. We have represented to such company or website that we have the affirmative right to email you with an offer on their behalf.
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The wanted but unexpected email is one of the major challenges facing ISPs and filter developers. If there was never any need or desire for people to receive email from someone they don’t know, then mail clients could be locked down to only accept mail from addresses on a whitelist. It wouldn’t completely solve the spam problem, for a number of reasons, but it would lessen the problem, particularly for average email users.
But, we don’t live in a world where we know beforehand who will be sending us mail, so we can’t just whitelist correspondents and reject everything else. I think this is a good thing. Email can be used to meet new people, develop new relationships and introduce new opportunities.
While the “cold call” email isn’t much talked about I think it’s worth some discussion. What makes a good cold email? What makes a bad one? We can use two recent emails I received as examples.
Example 1:
Multiple news sources are reporting that Herman Cain, republican presidential hopeful from 2012. Maddow on Herman Cain’s new business model. Apparently, his email address list is for rent by just about anyone, including companies selling cures for erectile dysfunction.
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