Spammed

[Brown and Boris]

By my own chamber of commerce who sold all the emails of members to anyone with a silver coin. One company bought them and didn't bother BCC'ing the recipient list so now every business within 20 miles has my email and is using it freely to spam me.

And I left the C of C 3 years ago!

[shadowninja]

Complain, assuming you didn't sign anything to say they could sell on your email. This also means that whoever you get spam from can get fined for not checking that your email was approved by you for receiving unsolicited emails. I want to see businesses get hurt so they take such marketing methods seriously.

[Brown and Boris]

shadowninja said:

Complain, assuming you didn't sign anything to say they could sell on your email. This also means that whoever you get spam from can get fined for not checking that your email was approved by you for receiving unsolicited emails. I want to see businesses get hurt so they take such marketing methods seriously.

I am not even a chamber member. I was back in 2003/4.

It seems that what has happened is that the chamber sent out some survey email and didn't BCC. The gym saw their chance but failed to remove the original message from the chamber so since then I have had another email (again no BCC) apologising , not for the spam, but for leaving the survey attached! then within minutes a recruitmnet consultant ws emailing with the same list of names with a word atachment with just his contact details and a woamn getting a massage ("relax, I will handlw your recruiting problems&quot.

I spoke to the chamber who were very non plussed and more concerned that I was stil on the database when I hadn't paid my subscription. I did mention that I thought there might be data protection act issues with them sharing emails but they insisted that all chamber members have access to every other members email address although I don't recall agreing to that (or that they could sell it) but not being a member anymore they are not very interested.

[DonnyMac]

Regarding the CCing of emails, this comes under the Data Protection Act, but as you're all business (sole traders are different) other companies can send you as many emails as they wish. There is no fine and its legislated that way.

If not, how could you email a new contact to tell him about your free/trial sampling idea/product?

Consumers = opt-in
Business = free for all

Best Practice, well that's a different matter.

Don
www.wizemail.co.uk