Rant: Enough with the NXTcomm spam

I don't know if NTXcomm is a good trade show or not. I've never been. And I'll never go.

Two years ago I stupidly signed up for a press/analyst pass, as I thought I might be able to attend. That simple act, combined with exceptionally poor database management on the organisers' part, led to a seeming never-ending stream of emails about the show. I think they take the PR/analyst list & redistribute it to about 12 departments within the same company, none of whom bother to check to see if I'm a relevant target for their dross.

Last year I received over 40 emails from them. Despite clicking on the "unsubscribe" link at least 8 times.

Eventually, I got in touch with some of the PR folk & told them if it didn't halt, I'd write a pretty coruscating post about their capabilities in terms of data protection, and their lack of competence in managing something as simple as "unsubscribe" request . I asked that they delete every reference to me from their databases.

Now, I'm already receiving 2008 messages from the organisation. And again they've ignored unsubscribe requests.

I note that the US "CAN SPAM" act contains the legal instruction "It requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method. You must provide a return email address or another Internet-based response mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you not to send future email messages to that email address, and you must honor the requests. "

Now, at the moment it's just a nuisance. Although it's obviously very unprofessional of them, I'm not the sort of person to pursue legal action over something this trivial. I'd rather just give them a bit of a kicking throuhg this blog. But if you're an exhibitor or sponsor of the event, next time your sales representative calls, tell them to sort it out.

And if you're an journalist, analyst or other potential attendee of the event - can I suggest you set up a "disposable" email address with Yahoo or similar, rather than trust the system with your primary address.