I found out a few days ago that my brother gets literally 1000 spams a day. I was kind of shocked. My two email accounts (which aggregate perhaps 10 different forwarders) probably get a total of 20-40 spams per day. Suddenly that doesn't seem so bad.
I can't understate my hatred and disgust for spammers, a category in which I include phone spammers and postal spammers as well as email spammers. Ethically, I think it's the lowest kind of behavior. Spammers prey upon the weakest people in society—purchasers of their products are hugely disproportionately the mentally ill, especially elderly folks with Alzheimer's. Further, their racket is based entirely on taking advantage of the goodness of the general public. We could stop spam tomorrow by simply refusing all initiation of contact from folks we don't know, but most of us aren't willing to live like that. Spammers work hard to poison our most valuable communications resources for their own usually minuscule benefit…
Last Summer at OSCON I ran into a guy on the show floor who tried really hard to recruit me to do some writing for him. I told him I might be interested, so he gave me his card; his pitch included recounting his long list of claimed technical accomplishments stretching way back in the industry. Just as I was leaving, he blurted out "oh, and if you Google me, you may find out that I was convicted of spamming." I was a bit shocked with him just saying such a thing out of the blue like that. I asked "did you do it?" His response was "No, the conviction was wrongful; it was all perfectly legal. I was sending out about a million messages per day." Gah! What could I say? I exclaimed "You're a spammer! I don't do business with spammers. Get away from me!" and fled.
I guess the guy was afraid that I'd find out anyway, and wanted to tell his side of the story. He would have been so much better off to just keep his mouth shut, though. I said to some of my colleagues later that it was like telling a stranger "I have VD" or "I think small children should all die"…except worse. Did I mention my hatred of spammers? I struggled hard with the ethical issue of whether to post the current contact information from his business card, including his phone number, here so that folks could "give him feedback" on his past practices. Ultimately I decided I didn't want the possible concommittant hassle.
Anyway… I just got the attached email from Microsoft. At least it looks to me from the headers like it came from Microsoft, and I'm not quite a novice at reading them—also it advertises an apparently legitimate Microsoft service, so I'm having a hard time imagining what the scam would be. (I've cleansed some things that look like possible personal identifiers in the attached HTML to try to avoid problems from posting here, so what you're seeing may not be quite what I saw. My apologies for the necessity.)
I suppose it's possible that at some point I forgot to opt out of some email list when I purchased something from Microsoft (yes, I've done this), which makes me a customer. Still, as far as I'm concerned it's spam—unsolicited commercial email. I have no interest in receiving "free offers" from Microsoft, and I don't appreciate it. Given the fact that most Americans with email are among their customers, Microsoft is in a special position to abuse common definitions of spam. Given that they are publicly highly anti-spam, Microsoft should be especially sensitive to email marketing pitches.
I think the opt-out button at the bottom is especially disingenuous. First of all, another thing I hate is HTML email—turns out it's a mighty hassle for me to even "push" that button. More importantly, though, it shows that Microsoft knows they're spamming here. They're aware that this email is unwelcome to many. They sent it anyway. I also think it's ironic that the link to their privacy statement was apparently tagged with a unique identifier (now removed) so that they could find out exactly who visited it.
Too bad that what Microsoft did is probably legal under current US law. They have pretty deep pockets. Maybe someday they'll slip, and someone will run a class action. If it happens, don't expect any sympathy from me. (B)