public wifi - was I spammed?

[pbharvey]

I stopped by a local sub shop the other day to grab lunch. While waiting for my order I killed a few minutes on my Blackberry and noticed I was logged onto someone's wifi. The sub shop is in a strip shopping center and there are stores on both sides that have public wifi. Later that evening I received an email coupon from the sub shop. Coincidence or did they somehow learn or capture my email address simply by me being in their space?

[notacop]

You play in the public, expect no privacy. The internet is a lot more insidious than you may want to believe.

[Ken H.]

It takes a certain amount of sophistication to harvest an email address out of a data stream, even an unsecured one. Probably beyond what a typical sub shop manager/company would do. And usually these things are done for far more insidious reasons than sending coupons.

 

Still, as mentioned using an unsecured wi-fi is a growing bad idea. If the sub shop doesn’t sniff you, sooner or later someone can/will.

 

[Joe Frickin' Friday]

I stopped by a local sub shop the other day to grab lunch. While waiting for my order I killed a few minutes on my Blackberry and noticed I was logged onto someone's wifi. The sub shop is in a strip shopping center and there are stores on both sides that have public wifi. Later that evening I received an email coupon from the sub shop. Coincidence or did they somehow learn or capture my email address simply by me being in their space?

 

Did you happen to pay for your meal with a credit card? If so, they may have taken your name on your CC and cross-referenced it against a previously purchased list of emails and names.

[pbharvey]

No, no credit card was used. I checked the email today (I hadn't opened it previously), the coupon was sent to me from eglancesender.com.

From their website:

CAN-SPAM Act Compliance

 

On December 16, 2003, President Bush signed into law the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (CAN-SPAM Act), which establishes a framework for reducing unsolicited email. The law prohibits predatory and abusive commercial email practices.

 

Email is an extremely important and effective means of communications and is used by millions of Americans on a daily basis for personal and commercial purposes. Its convenience and efficiency, however, are increasingly threatened by the rise in spam. Spam currently accounts for over half of all email traffic. Today, most spam is fraudulent or deceptive in nature. The growth in spam also imposes significant costs on Internet Service Providers (ISPs), businesses, and other organizations, since they can only handle a finite volume of email without making further investments in their infrastructure.

 

eGlanceSender.com complies with this law.

By the way, the sub shop was Jersey Mike's. They are a regional chain.

[Green RT]

I love how the direct email advertisers all spout the anti-spam law. When in fact they are contributing to the problem. I guess it is supposed to make you think they are the good guys and all the other spammers are evil. But all unsolicited email is spam, and makes up some huge fraction of all internet traffic.

[notacop]

Jersey Mikes has made it to the left coast, good too.

[UberXY]

It takes a certain amount of sophistication to harvest an email address out of a data stream, even an unsecured one. Probably beyond what a typical sub shop manager/company would do. And usually these things are done for far more insidious reasons than sending coupons.

 

 

 

Agreed. And a black hat loitering near the sub shop with the talent to do a man-in-the-middle hack would not be sending you a coupon for a sub.

[pbharvey]

Jersey Mikes has made it to the left coast, good too.

 

The thought occurred to me that a company looking to aggressively expand may be inclined to use aggressive marketing tactics...after all, they're from New Jersey

 

 

+1 for Jersey Mike's subs. Meat and cheese is sliced to order, done "Mike's Way" it gets doused with oil & vinegar, and the bread's good.

[Ken H.]

I love how the direct email advertisers all spout the anti-spam law. When in fact they are contributing to the problem. I guess it is supposed to make you think they are the good guys and all the other spammers are evil. But all unsolicited email is spam, and makes up some huge fraction of all internet traffic.

I think this does bring up an interesting quandary though... We have a tendency to dismiss all mass-email mailings under the broad category of undesirable “spam.” And indeed at this point of the electronic communications model, it is indeed very difficult to distinguish legitimate advertising mass mailings vs. scams, etc.

 

But yet we generally recognize the value of mass advertizing in other media. For example a television commercial is at its core; little more than a mass video message ‘spammed’ into our living rooms, involuntarily upon us. Indeed almost all advertizing is.

 

But yet we put some value on it, because to at least some extent; it helps educate us on purchasing decisions. If nothing else, it makes us more aware of our options.

 

However at this stage of the evolving ‘online experience’ we neither have the way or wherewithal to distinguish between a legitimate mass message from a legitimate merchant/advertiser vs. true junk or worse (Trojans, viruses, etc). Spam filters don’t cut it. They just indiscriminately categorize anything sent in mass as undesirable.

 

So when/where/how does online evolve to the point where legitimate mass advertizing has its place? As communication mediums evolve, e.g. Internet based presumed the future, newspapers presumed dying, how does legitimate advertizing gain a legitimate position/role?

 

[Twisties]

With all due respect, I choose to turn on a TV and accept advertising as the price for free programming.

 

Email is a service I purchase for my convenience and when someone commercially exploits that uninvited they are entering a space that I created without permission. This is much more akin to telemarketing than TV advertisements.

 

There is also the issue of internet backbone use/misuse and finance, which I don't know enough to comment on well. But these guys are abusing it, as I understand it.

 

So far as I know, I receive plenty of legit ads by email, where I have allowed it. I get Delta, Adobe, Epicurious and others. I assume the filters are generally working properly.