Grey spam: Did I really sign up for this?: "

Have you ever noticed that after you sign up to receive ‘special offers’ from your favorite airline you’re suddenly flooded with emails? In just the last nine days my inbox was flooded with 170 solicited e-mails - what I call ‘grey spam.’

As you can imagine, here at McAfee we get a lot of calls from customers who are concerned about the volume of spam showing up in their inbox. It often turns out to be grey spam. What do I mean by that? Basically, any email you receive after voluntarily providing your e-mail address so you can receive company news, special offers, etc.

Let’s face it, we’ve all been tempted by great online offers. But down the road I end up spending several hours of my precious time trying to unsubscribe from annoying and unwanted emails. Something has to change.

While many companies make it easy for us to receive information, most companies make it hard to opt-out.

Sample vendor opt-out clause

These sites are tricky, so what can you do?

• Make sure you uncheck boxes to receive information in the first place (they are often checked by default, and often way down low on the screen). And a word of warning - you’ll need to read the wording very carefully so you don’t unwittingly agree to receiving emails in the future
• Realize that if you don’t enter all of the fields correctly - e.g., while making a purchase - your original selections to opt-out will automatically be reset to the defaults again
• Under the CAN-SPAM Act there are no legal requirements for businesses to send you a confirmation note that you actually did unsubscribe. Be sure to follow-up to make sure this actually happens
• If you really want to follow the grey spam trail - use a unique email address for each Web site that you transact with. That way you’ll be able to trace who has been using and sharing your email address
• Finally, a free tool like McAfee’s SiteAdvisor will give you some insight into the number of emails generated from Web sites you share your information with.

While legislation including the CAN-SPAM Act, is rarely a deterrent for ‘real’ spammers who are creating an estimated 400,000 to 450,000 new IP addresses to blast out spam every day - it may deter grey spammers. But this will never prevent certain grey spam from hitting your inbox if at some point you accidentally, or intentionally, opt to receive these messages.

Eliminating this problem will take a coordinated effort between Internet service providers, security companies like McAfee, and possibly even a governing body for the marketing industry. I believe that a united call for standards will ultimately help everyone. Individuals receiving properly targeted messages are far more likely to do what the sender is hoping for, e.g., purchasing low-fare airline tickets, rather than just hitting the delete button.

I will advocate for changes. In the meantime, remember that every move you make online can have a consequence.

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(Read Original Article - Via Macafee Security Insights Blog.)