At the risk of being sued, I’m prepared to state categorically that iContact promotes spam. I don’t say this lightly; rather, I make this assertion because I’m fed up with dealing with the spam that it’s members continue to foist on me. So, I’m writing this post to help all of you deal with it when it comes.

Most of us have good spam filters to weed out the majority of junk that arrives in our InBox. But, spammers have figured out how to get around that, and I’m afraid that until such time as the powers that decide on what is code is acceptable what is not change the rules, there will be very little that we can do about it.

In this case, the spammers are using iContact to distribute their tripe. Their able to do so because a) the email marketing company doesn’t require a double-opt-in sign up, and b) (and this is the real kicker) the senders place an asterisk ahead of the name they give in the “from” box. That asterisk makes it impossible to filter out what follows, because it is a kind of wild card. In other words, if you used in in your filter, it would prevent everything from getting to you.

You can’t prevent this stuff from arriving, but you can minimize the damage. Here’s how.

At the bottom of the email, click the link that says you want to “confirm to list.” This will bring you to another screen where you can manage your account. Click the link at the bottom, and then untick the box beside the name of the person who sent it to you. Be sure that you also tick the box next to the “Do Not Contact List.”

You will find that doing this is much more effective than deleting it or consigning the message to your spam folder. If you do either of those, you’ll keep getting them from that person. I’ve managed to dramatically reduce the number I get by following the method I’ve suggested.

It seems to me that iContact has a responsibility to fight spam, rather than promoting it. There are a couple of easy things that they could do. First, they could make it impossible for their customers to preface any box in their emails with an asterisk. The second, and equally responsible thing to do, would be to institute a policy where double-opt-ins were required.

In the absence of both of these suggestions, I recommend that you use a more respectable service, such as AWeber.

You’ll have to be in international traveller who lugs around a laptop to appreciate what I’m going to tell you.

I’m in the States right now, but I regularly receive The Independent feed of headlines. Today, I noticed that there were various words in each of the stories that were printed in blue and double-underlined. Curious, I hovered my mouse over a couple of them. Surprise, surprise, the links had nothing whatever to do with the story. Not only were they ads for products, but the ads were germane to my current location. One was even for new windows. It seems that living outside of the UK is not enough to protect you from the dreaded double-glazing saleman.

I know times are tough, but in my mind the inclusion of such advertising seriously denigrates the value of the news it reports.

Is this the way of all journalistic flesh? I hope not.

Bruce Hoag, PhD, CPsychol
Work Psychologist