It is quick and cheap for businesses to send emails to customers and this makes the tool email marketing very profitable. This however led to abuse of the system and your mailbox might continuously be full of promotional messages you are not interested in. You probably think of it as spam.
Your first reaction might be to press the spam button which will blacklist the sender and you won't receive any more messages from this company. But unfortunately that doesn't prevent you from receiving more messages from other companies.
If a message is really spam (i.e. unsolicited offers often in a sexual nature) you should do nothing but flag it as spam. Replying to the sender will only make him aware that they are indeed mailing an active address and they will bombard you with even more messages.
If the message seems to be legitimate, e.g. from a company you know or it refers to your information request, it might well be that you knowingly or unknowingly agreed that they can send you email messages. Whilst flagging the sender as spam will have the required effect that you won't receive any more messages from him, this is not the best option. You might want to receive information from this company at a later point in time and you won't be able to receive the emails if you flagged them as spam in the past. It is also not fair to the business who has done nothing wrong, but might be penalized by email systems due to a number of recipients flagging them. The best option in these cases is to find the "unsubscribe" link that needs to be visible in every email a business sends. Within a few days of following the instructions in this link your emails should stop.
There might be other emails that don't look like spam, but you are absolutely sure that you never requested information from the company. You still should follow through with the unsubscribe route, however, you should also consider the possibility that your email address is sold in marketing databases. These databases are usually opt-in, so you might have inadvertently agreed to your email address to be sold or passed on at some point. Or of course this might have been done without your consent, which would make it illegal.
But what can you do if you suspect that your details are sold on a marketing database, but you don't know who is responsible?
You might want to contact the sender of one of these emails and request where your data has been obtained from. Companies are obliged to advise you on the source of your own data. Then you can contact the supplier of the records and request that your data is removed with immediate effect in line with the data protection act. If possible you should send this request in writing so that you have evidence of the request in case that your demand is being ignored.
You also might want to google your email address - if you can find your email address that way, so can others. You should remove your address from the sites you can find. If you can't remove them yourself, contact the owner of the site and request your removal in writing.
You should also list your email address as opt-out through the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). The mail preference service currently allows only opt-outs for phone, mail and fax, but is only a question of time until they take registrations for email addresses against which companies must suppress.
Going forward the best tip is to be very careful who you give your email address to and to which terms and conditions you agree. We are so used to provide our email address when subscribing to a site, that the thought of our data being sold on from there does not even cross our mind. So be careful which boxes you tick to avoid having to go through the trouble of being removed at a later point!
Your first reaction might be to press the spam button which will blacklist the sender and you won't receive any more messages from this company. But unfortunately that doesn't prevent you from receiving more messages from other companies.
If a message is really spam (i.e. unsolicited offers often in a sexual nature) you should do nothing but flag it as spam. Replying to the sender will only make him aware that they are indeed mailing an active address and they will bombard you with even more messages.
If the message seems to be legitimate, e.g. from a company you know or it refers to your information request, it might well be that you knowingly or unknowingly agreed that they can send you email messages. Whilst flagging the sender as spam will have the required effect that you won't receive any more messages from him, this is not the best option. You might want to receive information from this company at a later point in time and you won't be able to receive the emails if you flagged them as spam in the past. It is also not fair to the business who has done nothing wrong, but might be penalized by email systems due to a number of recipients flagging them. The best option in these cases is to find the "unsubscribe" link that needs to be visible in every email a business sends. Within a few days of following the instructions in this link your emails should stop.
There might be other emails that don't look like spam, but you are absolutely sure that you never requested information from the company. You still should follow through with the unsubscribe route, however, you should also consider the possibility that your email address is sold in marketing databases. These databases are usually opt-in, so you might have inadvertently agreed to your email address to be sold or passed on at some point. Or of course this might have been done without your consent, which would make it illegal.
But what can you do if you suspect that your details are sold on a marketing database, but you don't know who is responsible?
You might want to contact the sender of one of these emails and request where your data has been obtained from. Companies are obliged to advise you on the source of your own data. Then you can contact the supplier of the records and request that your data is removed with immediate effect in line with the data protection act. If possible you should send this request in writing so that you have evidence of the request in case that your demand is being ignored.
You also might want to google your email address - if you can find your email address that way, so can others. You should remove your address from the sites you can find. If you can't remove them yourself, contact the owner of the site and request your removal in writing.
You should also list your email address as opt-out through the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). The mail preference service currently allows only opt-outs for phone, mail and fax, but is only a question of time until they take registrations for email addresses against which companies must suppress.
Going forward the best tip is to be very careful who you give your email address to and to which terms and conditions you agree. We are so used to provide our email address when subscribing to a site, that the thought of our data being sold on from there does not even cross our mind. So be careful which boxes you tick to avoid having to go through the trouble of being removed at a later point!
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