What is the difference between spam and bulk email?
What is the difference between spam and bulk email? Many people ask this question and are often confused. Even though they are both emails, they are not the same. One simple reason that separates the two is “THE LAW.”
When someone sends a spam email, 99% of the time they often don’t value the law. They also don’t vale the respect and privacy of others especially when it comes to the ability to opt-out from future emails.
They use misleading email titles just to get you to open the emails.
They forge the email headers to trick the recipient server to allow the email to enter the recipient’s inbox.
They don’t provide any phone numbers, mailing address or email address so that people can communicate with them to be removed from their email list.
They sometimes send phishing or virus emails to make your computer into a zombie where they can control it for their monetary gain where you become the victim of theft, even identity theft.
The most advance spammers use ways to hide themselves as to use botnets to send spam. Some botnets are capable of sending over 500,000,000 emails per day and more. Some of those botnets are regular people’s computers that are infected with viruses that they use and mask themselves to send spam. We will explain this in a later post because it gets very technical.
On the other hand, getting an email from someone or a company that follows all the laws is “not spam”, rather it’s considered “bulk email”. With bulk email the sender is required to:
1. State who they are.
2. Give a precise email title and nothing misleading.
3. Notify in the body of the email what they are offering which must be similar to the email title.
4. Cannot use misleading header information to trick the server or the recipients.
5. Give different removal options such as:
a. Instant opt-out function where someone can click a link to be removed from the database.
b. A phone number to call and asked to be removed.
c. A mailing address so that people can send written notice not to be contacted again.
d. An email address where people can send an email to asking not to be emailed again.
Now the next time you receive an email you can quickly determine if it is a SPAM or a BULK EMAIL.
You can find out more information by visiting the government site http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business