Randy Cassingham's Blog

I got a note from a Premium subscriber saying he had clicked on an ad on my Jumbo Joke site. He noted, "I used a throwaway email address to access the site and now get between 100 and 300 spam messages per day (my 'real' email gets 5-10 spam messages per day). I'm so glad it's not my primary email address, but how many of your readers don't know any better?"

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I asked the reader what ad it was, and he said it was one of those "Free I.Q. Test" ads. I had seen at least one of them Jumbo Joke myself. He noted "After spending the time taking the test, the site requires a lot of info in order to get the results. In fact it asked for so much info, one screen at a time, I finally gave up and never did get a score." But he still got a big pile of spam; apparently, name and e-mail address were among the first things it asked. And he gave it to them. He gets an extra 10 points for using a "throw-away" address.

Unfortunately, I don't make enough on my "Google Adsense" ads to get an account manager, but I have a friend in their Adsense department, so I forwarded the reader's complaint. I heard back from my friend today: "I escalated [it] to one of our policy specialists, who said that he went through the process and found that the site specifically stated that email addresses would be shared with third parties, and so met our policy as far as we can tell. I think the easiest thing for you to do would be to block those ads."

I can indeed block ads from specific advertisers that I know are abusive, and I blocked the one he used as soon as I found out about the spamming. I'm a bit distressed that it's OK with Adwords for a web site to be a spammer address collection house as long as they disclose that they "specifically state that email addresses will be shared with third parties," but I do understand how hard it is to draw lines when it comes to making policies without getting ridiculous with the small print.

But let that be a warning to you: anytime you sign up on a web site with your e-mail, take a second to look at the small print! Does it say "Your address is never shared" (like True's site does, with those final two words being a link to True's privacy policy), or does it "specifically state that email addresses will be shared with third parties"? The difference could mean you'll get only what you specifically want, or you'll get inundated with garbage.

At the risk of offending my reader (which I don't mean to do), I think the lesson of this particular problem is clear: If you give a site your e-mail address after they've warned you that they're going to sell it to others, you might consider your I.Q. to be "lower than average"!

(OK, I know: he probably didn't notice the disclaimer. That's why I say you should always take a second to look!)

It's sad that in this day and age spam is so prevalent. It should have been solved by now, but it's not: you do have to be careful with your address. Spam is now around 90 percent of all e-mail, so you have to be more careful than ever -- which means my Spam Primer is more relevant than ever. You probably think you're "too savvy" to be caught in a spammer's trap. I can guarantee you that reader did! If you're too busy to protect yourself, at least read the Primer's executive summary.