Jul 03 2008
The BBC hasn’t a clue
I was amazed today to see this story on the BBC website complaining about the issue of spam. Now I hate spam as much as anyone but there is a huge difference between unsolicited commercial email and email you have requested.
The well respected Free UK Stuff affiliate site operates on a best practice policy for email. Basically if the user signs up and requests offers and can prove that it really is their email account then they will be sent the offers they have requested.
However in what appears to be a thinly veiled advert for McAfee the BBC have run such a poorly researched piece that in the video they even include the user completing the double opt-in process on Free UK Stuff and then they call the messages which they requested spam! Then they continue to allege that email addresses are sold to less reputable companies down the line.
I strongly suggest that someone even slightly technically competent gets involved in their technology stories in the future before they make any more blunders like this one.
More on the story from site owner Clarke Duncan.
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Jul 4th, 2008 at 10:06 am | #
This is yet another example of the BBC (as well as almost every other major media company) jumping on the band wagon against “Buzz words” like spam.
Just because most people in their audience have a rough or vague idea what the word means they feel they have to reinforce positive or negative links to it. The problem is they end up creating false impressions of loads of internet based services or websites, the same thing happened with napster and is now happening with bitorrent.
I think the basic truth is most people don’t read what they are signing up for they just jam their email address in then complain when they get an email through.
Jul 14th, 2008 at 6:56 am | #
This is a real shame. There is already so much confusion about ’spam’ among the general populace and unfortunately reporting like this just makes it worse.
Jul 25th, 2008 at 8:45 pm | #
Saw the story a few weeks ago and was appalled. Some lady complaining that she subscribed to an autoresponder service and subsequently got emails. Well when you subscribe to an opt in list, of course you will get emails. That’s what you subsribed for
Jul 28th, 2008 at 12:54 pm | #
I also read this a couple of weeks ago but at least the BBC have removed the offending video now and issued an apology to Freestuff.co.uk
As mentioned by a previous commenter, journalists are happy to jump on keywords like SPAM without really understanding what they are talking about, or doing proper research. I guess they know that a term like that will elicit an emotional response from readers. It’s a shame because a lot of the general public do have a negative view of all commercial email, and really don’t understand what it means to opt in to a subscription. An organtisation like the BBC should be educating people, not confusing them further.
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