Some websites require me to enter an e-mail address before they let me use them. Since I am in control of my own web server, I can be reached at any address of the form victor-{foobar}@nicollet.net, which means I can determine which website sold my address. For instance, when I registered on mint.com, I used victor-mint@nicollet.net.
The main benefit of doing this is that I have a very simple way of un-registering from mass mailings of these websites: set up a message rule to send all incoming mail for a certain address to a spam inbox. This way, I don’t have to make myself known to the sender (or wander aimlessly on their web page or fight against customer support) so I can get my address removed from their lists. And I get the minor satisfaction that I use up a few hundred bytes in their databases 
Here are some figures from my “Spammy” inbox:
Amazon: I opened an account to buy a video game as a birthday gift. To use Amazon, I had to agree to their terms of use, which include:
When you visit Amazon.com or send e-mails to us, you are communicating with us electronically. You consent to receive communications from us electronically. We will communicate with you by e-mail or by posting notices on this site. You agree that all agreements, notices, disclosures and other communications that we provide to you electronically satisfy any legal requirement that such communications be in writing.
I received 9 pieces of advertisment in a month (that is, about one every three days), all of them quite obviously targeted based on my purchase.
Mint.com: I opened an account to connect to my bank online, only to discover once the account had been opened that my bank was not supported yet because it was an european bank and their website only supports US institutions. But I still agreed to their terms of use:
By providing us with your e-mail address, you agree to receive all required notices electronically, to that e-mail address.
I received six pieces of advertisment for Mint.com services in a month (or about one every five days), and I could argue that they were hardly required. But what is quite sad is that I told them twice that I couldn’t use their website, and they still tell me I should use it:
You already know that I couldn’t connect my bank account to Mint.com
because I use an unsupported bank. You even sent me out a mail telling
me that you’re doing your best, and that you will notify me as soon as
it’s ready.I was intending to wait quietly until you supported my bank.
But it seems that until then, you will be sending me mail about what
services I should benefit from despite the fact that I cannot use them.
If this is what you intend to do, I would rather unsubscribe from
Mint.com and come back when (and if) I remember about you to see if my
bank is supported yet.
And on neither occasion would they accept to unregister me—instead taking time to tell me that I can perform the unregistration operation myself (I suspect it was a canned response, but who would be insane enough to answer a dissatisfied customer concerned enough to send you a mail with a canned response?)
Le Figaro: the website of a french newspaper, where I entered my e-mail address because it was required to post a comment. At no point in the process did I give my assent to the e-mail address being used to send any form advertisment. In fact, the mere possibility of the e-mail address being used to send any kind of e-mail (beyond those related to the posting of a comment) is not mentioned in any reasonably obvious place on the website (terms of use, legal notices, or the page where the address is entered).
Since I posted that comment two months ago, I have received four pieces of unsolicited advertisment, one of which had been sent by a partner of Le Figaro and had nothing to do with the newspaper at all (it tried to sell tickets for a soccer game).
Recent Comments