Stupid Media Watch: Another Case of CSDS

There’s a pathology prevalent among the Internet’s digerati.

It’s called Can-Spam Derangement Syndrome, or CSDS. Its sufferers blame everything wrong with e-mail on the fact that the U.S. Can Spam Act is opt-out based, or doesn’t require marketers to get permission before e-mailing people.

Lose something in your spam folder? Blame Can Spam. Girlfriend break up with you via e-mail? Blame Can Spam. Did your wife—or better yet, your mother—tell you to get off the computer and get a life? Blame Can Spam.

The latest case of CSDS is an article published on PCWorld.com last week written by Amir Lev in which Lev claims some spammers are getting around the Can Spam Act’s requirement to honor opt outs by slightly changing their names.

“Some 'enterprising' direct marketers have decided that if they frequently change the name of their company, they don't need to worry about paying attention to opt-out requests,” wrote Lev.

“Here's a simplified example:let's imagine a company decided it was going to play dirty marketing tricks. We'll call our fictional company Spammer, LLC,” he continued.

“The first week of the spam campaign, the company might call itself Spammer1, sending e-mail from sales@spammer1.com and linking users to a website at www.spammer1.com. The spammers would spam everyone they felt like sending email to, as long as they didn't scrape the email addresses from the web, falsify headers, or do anything else illegal.

“Of course, people would send opt-out requests, which they'd pretend to honor. Except, in the second week of their campaign, they'd be calling themselves Spammer2 and send from sales@spammer2.com, spamvertising www.spammer2.com. This way, because they're pretending to be a separate company, they can ignore those pesky opt-outs.

“In week three, they're sales@spammer3.com... and so on.

“This seems to adhere to the letter of the law. The sender is honoring the opt-outs, in the sense that they won't be sending email to anybody more than once -- because the next time they send e-mail, they're a separate, brand-new entity. All of the other CAN-SPAM requirements are being followed to the letter, of course.”

And of course, the piece wouldn’t be complete without blaming Can Spam.

“Ultimately, this is the downside of spam laws that codify an opt-out regime. As I noted in November, most of the rest of the world requires that marketers first get a user's permission,” concluded Lev.

There is a technical term for the type of argument Lev uses in that piece: It’s called “bullshit on stilts.”

Just because a company changes it name slightly and sends from a different domain doesn’t mean it’s a different company. And if there is some firm out there engaging in this slimy practice—Lev offers no examples—then it’s not adhering to the letter of the law, it’s breaking it.

Regular Magilla Marketing readers are aware of one firm that operates somewhat the way Lev describes: EmailAppenders and all its aliases. I’ve never opted out of any e-mails from any of the firms I’ve been able to tie to EmailAppenders, so I don’t know whether it honors opt outs or not. Its reps do, however, send e-mail under different company names from slightly changed domains.

And that firm’s tactics have nothing to do with the lack of an opt-in provision in the Can Spam Act. Moreover, using new domains to spam is just plain dumb. As Lev notes in his piece, ISPs using solid reputation systems limit the amount of e-mail they’ll allow to come from new domains.

And just as an aside, scraping e-mail addresses off the Internet is not illegal under Can Spam. It’s an aggravating factor in sentencing for firms that have been busted for violating other provisions.