When I send out blast emails, I have a standardized footer on the bottom that allows people to opt out if they so desire.  I’m ethical in how I gather email contact lists.

I try to keep the contacts limited to either people I know, folks who have opted in, or folks who may be interested based upon other lists that they have appeared on.  Yes, I harvest contacts from mass mailings.  I am aware that others may do this as well, which is why when I send out a blast email, I address it to myself and blind copy everyone else. It’s a practice I wish more folks would follow.

There have been times when I have been included in a blast mail and did not wish to remain on the person’s list for one reason or another, so I politely ask to be removed, and I am removed. There have been times when I’ve been solicited by artist spam emails in the past.  The end result was quite interesting, and, judging by the comments, helpful to others.

It is in that spirit that I post about an email that ended up in my inbox recently. It was from Alborques Galeria Online <alborques@gmail.com>, and had only a web address and an attachment, which you’ll see reproduced here after the jump.

I visited the website and found it to be poorly designed and ugly to look at.  Very busy and not at all user friendly.  A little googling revealed what I thought — the guy is into SEO and is looking to build traffic to create revenue for his site.  Nothing wrong with that, but at least have some decent content.

I replied to his mail with a request to remove me from his list and then hit the REPORT SPAM in Gmail link. I’d encourage anyone else who gets this type of email from this guy to do the same.  The funny thing is that the address to which he sent the mail is not my marc.moss.art@gmail address.  Funny.

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