Yahoo! is one of the companies who spams. They don’t harvest addresses the convential way. What they do is, every so often, declare that “database errors” mean that they can no longer be entirely sure about their database records, and that the only thing they can do is… Mark everyone to receive everything. They have done this at least once, possibly twice.
Today’s spam is particularly funny, though.
You received this email because the information for the account nospamever\_assholes indicates that Yahoo! may contact you about building web sites for personal or professional use.As you might guess, I indicated no such thing; rather, they changed my database settings, without my approval. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, that account was closed a long time ago, so it's not just an account that was opted out of spam, it's an account that isn't even still active.
The idea, of course, is that when too many people opt out of promotional mailings, it’s no longer a viable business model. You have to start spamming them again, or the list isn’t worth much… At the same time, they’re migrating towards having “yahoo-inc.com” put in our site-wide spam filters.
As you might guess, there’s an autoresponder with stuff about “how to unsubscribe”. I doubt my message was read by a real human. I guess we’ll find out.
Comments [archived]
From: Ada
Date: 2006-07-26 13:33:47 -0500
I click on the unsubscribe links to try to get rid of them - they send you a cute little message in your inbox that SAYS your unsubsribed, but in reality they keep spamming you. I label everything junk - unless its in my address book, that was the only safe way i didnt have to see the stupid spam messages….