"We accidentally subscribed you..."

Bobster · **Joined:** Fri Mar 23, 2007 4:16 pm **Posts:** 206

This arrived recently:

Quote:

Subject: I'm sorry, we've made a mistake
From: "Michelle Douglas" <[email protected]>

I'm sorry I am emailing you. Due to a recent database malfunction, we accidentally subscribed you to our email newsletter list.

As a large amount of users were accidentally added, we would ask that if you did not subscribe to the EliteConsensus email list,
that you please unsubscribe yourself so that we do not send you an email again.

UNSUBSCRIBE HERE

Please accept my apologies.

Regards,

Michelle @ EliteConsensus

This is not a spam email, but an opt-out request, which cannot be classified as spam and is recommended by the CAN-SPAM act.
We are requesting you to remove yourself from our automated newsletter due to a technical difficulty.
Failure to opt-out yourself will then mean we will be sending you our weekly newsletter. Thank you for your help.

Do they really think we're that stupid that we won't be able to see through the lies? Hmmm, I wonder, did this spammer also "accidentally" purchase my e-mail address, or "accidentally" run an e-mail address harvesting spambot, prior to "accidentally" subscribing me to their newsletter?

spamislame · **Joined:** Tue May 09, 2006 9:18 am **Posts:** 5022

Believe it or not, this can happen - and has, even with very well-respected brands.

I'd be interested to see the raw code for that notification. It is not *always* a scam or a lie. Sometimes a company will hire an intern to handle things like list uploads to whichever email vendor they use, and they won't be very experienced, and lots of people *could* suddenly be subscribed when they weren't supposed to be.

I'm not saying this one is 100% legit (I've never heard of them) but merely pointing out, this does happen, and if your lists are loyal and of a huge size, you very likely *will* want to use this tactic to ensure your list is clean.

SiL

AlphaCentauri · **Joined:** Thu Mar 01, 2007 3:01 am **Posts:** 5915

If they were telling the truth, why not say, "If you wanted to be subscribed to this list, please contact us." Telling you to unsubscribe is the same as asking you to confirm your email address is valid.

This is the same "We would like to add you to our opt-in email list. If you want to receive our emails, you don't have to do anything. Otherwise please click the link below to unsubscribe" double-opt-out crap I get all the time. It's just being dressed up a little more cleverly.

ADD: Looks like the host, GoDaddy, agreed. The Twitter page twitter.com/#!/eliteconsensus links to eliteconsensus.com, a domain that is now parked. The registrar, ENom, hasn't done anything about it, so it will likely be back.

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