Using Email

You can use email to tell people about your web site provided that the email you send is not unsolicited. You cannot and should not go buy an email list or an email directory from someone and then indiscriminately spam 10,000 people with email. You will garner nothing but ill will, and potentially legal action, if you do that.

Email is an extremely sensitive topic right now. In the words of our Internet Service Provider:

Unsolicited email is an extremely unfriendly act. Unlike postal "junk mail", the cost for unsolicited email is paid by the recipient, in terms of transfer time and storage.

This has become a large problem on the Internet in the past few years. Many firms refuse any dealings with organizations that commit these actions. This includes many that go as far as blocking all IP traffic to/from those sites.

If an unsolicited email were sent from our systems, this could have a severe impact upon our business.

Further, there has been a movement in a number of states to make this form of emailing illegal. The US Code which covers junk faxes may also be held to apply. Again, this could have a severe impact upon our business.

What you can do is send email to people who have requested email in one way or another. Here are examples of people who fall into this category:

People who send you email. Obviously if someone sends you email you can send a reply. Therefore you would like to have as many people sending you email as possible if you wish to use email as a vehicle for promoting your web site.
People who post their email address in a public place. If you visit a web site and it contains an email address with the solicitation, "Send mail to: abc@xyz.com", you are allowed to send them personal email. They would not post the address publicly if they did not wish you to send email. [Note, however, that there are some people who would say that "Send Email to:" is not a solicitation. They get bent far out of shape if you send them any sort of email. Strange but true (BYG has experienced it first hand in one case!), so keep that in mind.]
People who post to newsgroups. You may send a personal reply to a newsgroup posting. You can also post to the newsgroup itself (see the related article on newsgroups). What you cannot do is "harvest" 10,000 email addresses from a newsgroup and indiscriminately spam them all with a random message.

The email issue is extremely "hot" right now, so extra caution is advisable. See, for example, these four sites:

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