I received an unsolicited email "newsletter" from John Pope's Civitas Institute this morning. I'm not sure how they got my email although one thing is certain, I did not provide it to Civitas and I did not ask to receive their newsletter.
That Civitas is spamming me is bad enough, but here is where it becomes really annoying and a stupendously bad public relations move by Civitas: They provided my email address to a third party to send and track the emails. Without my knowledge or consent, Civitas has delivered my email address to iContact.com. The email itself is embedded with tracking schemes through iContacts' domain icptrack.com. Even clicking on a link that appears to be to an article at the Civitas' web site is routed first through a tracking relay at icptrack.com. It's spying.
Worst of all, to unsubscribe, one must click through to iContact.com, a well-known means by which spammers confirm that an email address is valid. Sure, it may stop email from Civitas, but iContact gets a confirmation of a valid email address -- to then use or sell to others if they wish.
The Civitas email contained a solicitation for donations. Here's my answer: No way in hell.
Twenty bucks says one of your friends added you to the list. I was added to Obama for America's list at least five times last year.
ReplyDeleteSuch are the wages of credibility.
ReplyDeletejhs, leaving aside the most egregious transgression of Civitas sharing the email addresses with a spying third party, most "subscribe" forms send a confirmation request to the submitted email first before actually subscribing them. Civitas is to blame here.
ReplyDelete