The junk email FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions About Junk Email

Q: What is junk email?

A: Junk Email is unsolicited commercial electronic mail. In other words, it is when someone sends you an unwanted advertisement via email. Often, junk email is sent in bulk to a large number of addresses using an automated mailing program.

Q: How is junk email different from spam?

A: Junk Email is often mis-labeled as Spam. Spam is a name for a excessive multiple posting of a substantially identical message on Usenet. Spam often contains commercial advertising, but the definition is based on the number of postings, and not the content of the message. Because there are effective filtering and cancel mechanisms available on Usenet, it is becoming clear to advertisers that spamming is not an effective means of generating business. Unfortunately, many Net advertisers are now moving to junk email.

Q: Why is this A Bad Thing?

A: Junk email requires that the recipient (or victim) pays to receive the advertisement message, and the victim has no way to avoid doing so. Also, since many junk emailers use automated mailing programs, and sell their email address lists, the volume of junk email can quickly rise to unmanageable levels, clogging the victim's in-box and prevent access to legitimate email.

Q: Who does this?

A: The short answer is: rude people. Some may not realize that they are being rude; however, many do. The appeal to them is that junk email appears, at least on the surface, to be much cheaper than other advertising methods. Sending an email message appears virtually free to the sender, and a junk emailer can send email to 10,000 addresses as cheaply as one. Because of this, even a fraction of a percent positive response is a great return on investment. Of course, that is overlooking the fact that the other 9,999 people had to be irritated and materially inconvenienced by the junk email.

Q: What if I want to find out about a product?

A: You can certainly use Web search engines to find out about products advertised on the Web. You could also sign up for a specialized mailing list to be sent information about a particular product or topic, or use a mail-back email responder. There is no legitimate reason for someone to send you commercial email without your request or permission.

Q: Is commercial email ever OK?

A: Sure, if the recipient has knowingly requested the material. This could be through an auto-responder, or even just a personal exchange of email. Many businesses distribute information effectively on the Internet this way.

Q: What about junk email that tells you to reply with a keyword in order to avoid getting further messages?

A: That's not good enough. It just wastes more of our valuable time. Valid automated mailing lists require you to subscribe to them, for good reason: There are at more than 54,000 known electronic mailing lists--imagine the chaos if all mailing lists subscribed everyone on the Net automatically! Would you want to spend the time sending 54,000 replies?

Q: What about putting those "I will proofread junk email for $XXX" contracts in your .sig file?

A: Well, they may act as a deterrent, but they probably aren't legally binding, because you can't show that the junk emailer actually saw your notice (and, due to their address-collection software, they probably didn't). You could send a notification by certified mail (assuming you can get a valid snail-mail address), send a bill if you got junk emailed again, and then sue in your local small-claims court when they didn't pay. This relies on the concept of Notification and Offer, a common-law legal concept that you have to pay if you do something that costs someone else money, even if you didn't sign a contract before hand. The commonly-cited example is when you gas up your car: you are told how much you will have to pay (and you don't have to accept what is offered to you), but once you start filling the tank you're on the hook to pay up (that is, taking the action indicates your acceptance of the offer, which obliges you to pay). Junkbusters Spamoff uses this concept to fight junk email.