Defining SPAM

We all know that spam is on the increase, spam engines protect us from the scourge that is SPAM, but how many of us know what the definition of spam really is?

We came across a great definition on one of the many Anti-Spam houses we deal with as an email marketing and service provider. Here is their technical definition:

“The word ‘Spam’ as applied to Email means Unsolicited Bulk Email (‘UBE’).

Unsolicited means that the Recipient has not granted verifiable permission for the message to be sent. Bulk means that the message is sent as part of a larger collection of messages, all having substantively identical content.

A message is Spam only if it is both Unsolicited and Bulk.
- Unsolicited Email is normal email
(examples: first contact enquiries, job enquiries, sales enquiries)

- Bulk Email is normal email
(examples: subscriber newsletters, customer communications, discussion lists)”

http://www.spamhaus.org/definition.html

What makes the spam debate and the internet environment complicated is that many Anti-Spam organizations have different definitions of spam. Many apply the definition above when classifying mail as spam, others however follow the various spam acts classifying email as spam as follows:
•    Some classify a email as spam based on content, taboo words or phrases that are commonly associated with spam,
•    Others classify an email as spam based on how the email is composed, correct headers and footers, links and subject lines.
•    Many look at the facilities and origins of the email; such as bounce management or if the mail originates from a legitimate sender or blacklisted IP address.
•    Some companies and Spam Houses use a combination of all the above, with some of the biggest ISP’s taking new steps to address spam in a different way, look forward to pMailer 3.0 integrating more of these,

We tend to agree with the above definition of: if it is bulk and solicited it is NOT spam. pMailer promotes best practices with all our clients, these range from properly formatted HTML emails, subscription forms, unsubscribe links, opt-in facilities (depending which global region is targeted) and automated bounce management. So too do our clients follow the practices we promote as best they can.

We believe the content that our clients send is theirs to write, own and distribute to their clients whom wish to receive the email. In a perfect world this would be possible, but both legitimate senders of mail and the valued subscribers whom desire this information are forced to deal the scourge called SPAM.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 2:31 pm and is filed under Content Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.