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Data Protection Issues
UK-Netmarketing Weekly Round-up - April 06, 2001

When is it acceptable to send unsolicited email? Is it never? Even if someone puts their email address on a website, are they considered fair game. It's a particularly thorny issue, particularly as we all get bombarded by offers to get out of debt or things more unsavoury. Theoretically the DPA (Data Protection Act), should protect us from this type of spamming, but despite a growing number of prosecutions, the reality appears somewhat different.

Liz Williams faced this problem and asked the subscribers for their thoughts, "Tricky DPA question... if people make their e-mail addresses publicly accessible then is contacting them still considered spamming? Erring on the side of caution, I guess the answer is probably 'yes' but wondered if the rules were different when it came to addresses that were readily available in the public domain e.g. listed in Who's Who, politicians' e-mail addresses etc"

Sally Krumholz replied, "Well my definition is that it's still 'junk mail' as it's unsolicited & I didn't opt in for it. You have had no contact with the consumer asides from finding their info on the public domain. Sort of how some companies harvest names off of personal websites or the phone book...Other sites, like who-where & yahoo may get some of their databases from the phone book. unfortunately, it's up to the user to go to the site & remove it. Recently, I've spent some time checking to see if I'm listed anywhere to minimize spam. You have two choices really....go for it & mail them, piss the recipient off but give them a REAL way to de-list or use only opt-in lists. Personally I've always felt this public domain issue with regards to user information to be a bit tricky. Especially when I've noted so many junk emailers using harvesting software as of late."

Andrew Petherick added, "If they make their addresses publicly available then they should expect people to contact them by email on a one to one basis about something specific to them. It becomes spam when the message is a bulk unsolicited email sent to a large group of recipients who have not requested actual contact with the sender. It seems like that's exactly what you are planning to do! I wouldn't unless you want to seriously damage the reputation of your client."

Alex Chudnovsky shared his thoughts on the DPA's position, "I believe DPA doesn't' regulate spamming per se, but rather what extra facilities you should have in case if you spam them - i.e. unsubscription details available (and it should work) etc. Now, I am going to sound repetitive and obvious but you are in a loser's business if you consider spamming anyone. Let me repeat -- YOU WILL _NOT_ WIN. That's it, unless you have very short term (and short sighted) goals."

Ashley Pomeroy took a strong anti-spam stance, writing, "All unsolicited commercial mail is spamming, whether the address is publicly available or not. Heck, all the e-mail addresses in the grand signature files of the posters on UKNM are 'publicly available', as they are on the Internet for all to see. So are the posts, and I assume this is why UKNM is generally very measured and polite and reserved and not a vicious torrent of personal abuse."

Martin Lloyd described his attitude towards unsolicited emails, "Spam is only partly a legal thing. Mostly it's in the mind of the recipient. As far as I'm concerned, if I've not given your company explicit permission to mail me then its spam... Incidentally I've actually given quite a lot of companies permission to mail me, and I reckon my response rate to these companies is actually pretty high. My Christmas recommendations from Amazon have become a standard part of my Xmas shopping for example. I've religiously filled in every for Peppers and Rogers have ever sent me although they do bribe me with free books and market intelligence. On the other hand I don't think I've ever responded to unsolicited mail, and I get *lots* almost certainly due to harvesting programs."

"What about journalists?", asked Mike Rowe, "Many newspapers now publish email addresses for journalists, and thousands of email addresses are also contained in media databases such as Mediadisk. Journalists know they will receive a large amount of unsolicited emails as a result, the vast majority of which they don't want, so are they being spammed of have they opted in?"

Andrew Petherick replied, "This depends on how good a PR you are! If you bulk send the same story out to all journalists in the assumption that the more mud you throw, the more of it will stick, then it's spam. If you send it to a defined group with an angle specific to each individual's publication, then it becomes a specific communication. The dictionary definition is:

Spam: Unsolicited e-mail, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups; junk e-mail.

Key word: 'indiscriminately'

"So a commercial e-mail about will-writing services can be sent to 20,000 people as a 'specific communication' on the assumption that they are all going to die?", countered Mike Rowe, "If a building society sends out an electronic press release about a new type of financial product it will be seeking to target all the regional press, the national press, consumer titles, personal finance magazines, etc. Not even the very best PR person can expect to get every single press release they email out published by every journalist they email it to. Some will use the story, some won't. Have those who don't use it, been spammed, indiscriminately targeted, or specifically communicated with?"

Andrew Petherick answered, "Surely that's the reason that many journalists dislike PRs; because instead of sending highly targeted information to specific journalists who are interested in a particular area, many choose to send to all journalists on the assumption that some of the mud will stick. Consequently, the recipient gets loads of poorly targeted rubbish he or she is not interested in and doesn't have time to read. I guarantee if you spoke to journalists, opted them in to receive emails specific to their interests and didn't send the irrelevant press releases in which they have no interest, they would by 100 times more likely to read the material sent out."

Anu Upadhya suggested an anti-spam resource, "I think there was a euro body or others lobbying to the EU for anti-spamming in Europe, EuroCAUCE was involved in 98/99 the article I read that stopping spamming is impossible as most (95%) of spamming comes from the US and cant be regulated here in Europe."

Whilst there seems to be a general consensus on sending bulk unsolicited emails to consumers, business-to-business communications is less clear. This is particularly the case where companies are included, sometimes paying for the privilege, of being included in directories both on- and offline. Where does the line between business development and spamming happen? Clearly, something that is still being established.

The Truth About Traffic

Subscribers to the list often ask where they can find a list of websites and their traffic figures. Resources tend to be few and far between and the small number of websites who have their traffic independently audited means reliance on publisher's statements.

Leon Reilly, asked about the figures listed in New Media Age's Traffic Update, "Are the submitted traffic figures checked for authenticity? Following the E-District fiasco it's clear that some media owners are more unscrupulous than others..."

Ian Tester wasn't terribly positive in his outlook:

never turned this into a really useful resource, as the data simply doesn't exist anywhere else (oh, and they could make money out of it, lots of money)
that publishers have still failed to get their act together.

He continued, "If you want an amusing tea-break minute, pick up the latest new media age traffic report, and try to guess what is complete fiction, and what may have some basis in truth - there are some *howlers* on there. e-district being one case in point... How nobody picked up on that before is beyond me, but that's what happens when people don't understand the business (did the chairman never stop, think and say 'Steve, that's a substantial part of the entire UK internet population?")

If you want further amusement, do the following:

Take the NMA figure
Ring the company's ad sales department, and ask them for the latest figure, note it
Ring the company's marketing department, do same
Ring the company's account department, ask same

by now, you should have a lovely set of 4 figures. put them into excel, graph them, take the median, and you will be no closer to the truth! Mind you, you can't really blame centaur: media business released a wall chart recently, which contained only ABC figures... that was funny! Some sites hadn't been audited for 2 years but published the old figures anyway: useful. If NMA printed only checked figures, they'd:

need a staff of 100 accountants and 100 techies
have no data for the wall chart, which could then be sponsored by Rizla.

"Yup, too true. And I know for a fact that some of them are *gasp* made up i.e. take the real figure and double it (I'm naming no names, but it wasn't the company that got caught). Which is why most companies don't really want to be ABC audited just now, because figures ain't what they used to be.", agreed 'Charon'. She continued, "Seems to me everyone is saying that huge traffic = good. But has anyone actually thought about the quality v quantity argument. An ISP may have over 1 million members and (supposedly) 25+mill page views a month, but how many of those members are genuinely active i.e. returning more than once a week and interacting? That figure makes more sense to an advertiser than most of the other figures bandied about."

Alastair Pinkney added, "That sounds pretty familiar. I very recently worked on a site where the figures we were announcing to NMA were based on MarketWave/Hitlist that analysed Web logs and identified users, new users, av. User session, av. no. of pages viewed per session. ABC came and did an audit and promptly announced user figures that increased unique users by 300%. Nice. Good to be accused of under egging the pudding for once... Using cookies as an analysis tool for users helps (although I believe it helps if you use Apache servers) but I've yet to be convinced that ABC is the answer. With volatility of traffic/users quoting a two or three month old audited figure let alone a two-year-old figure is just plain misleading. Monthly audits would be good and should form part of any Industry standard/methodology - when it's agreed."

LINKS OF NOTE:
A quick round up of interesting, funny, useful and other links gleaned from the uk-netmarketing list, office gossip and other nefarious sources...we take no responsibility should you chose to click...basically, it's not our fault. Enjoy:

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