The whole employment market seems FUBAR (look it up if you don’t know). Not only am I constantly inundated with spam and calls telling me about a great new Sharepoint developer a staffing agency can place with me, recruiters send me desperately mismatched job opportunities. One particular one recently came across my email for a “Security Analyst” role. What struck me wasn’t the badly formatted main part of the message but the hilarity of the footers.
First was this:
The information transmitted in this email is intended solely for the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. If you are not the intended recipient, be aware that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of this transmission is prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from your system.
The email “may” contain confidential information? I’m “prohibited” from disclosing the contents of the email? By what law, regulation, contract, theory or act of God am I prohibited? This type of language is reminiscent of the blind leading the naked. It’s the same silliness that I get sometimes when someone explains to me I have to answer their question because “It’s the law!” Really? What law? Where did you go to law school? Often time, it a refrain people use to make someone else compliant with their needs and wishes. If the recipient is as ignorant of the law as the sender, then compliance is assured.
The second part of the footer was even funnier:
Note: We respect your Online Privacy. This is not an unsolicited mail. Under Bill s.1618 Title III passed by the 105th U.S. Congress this mail cannot be considered Spam as long as we include Contact information and a method to be removed from our mailing list. If you are not interested in receiving our e-mails then please enter “Please Remove” in the subject line and mention all the e-mail addresses to be removed, including any e-mail addresses which might be diverting the e-mails to you. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience.
Let’s tally up the errors in this, shall we?
We respect your Online Privacy. Really? If you respected my privacy, you wouldn’t be spamming me with unsolicited messages, regardless of the law.
This is not an unsolicited mail. I didn’t solicit it, therefore it is unsolicited. You might be able to argue (though wrongly) that it doesn’t meet the definition of spam or isn’t illegal, but you can’t truthfully say it is not unsolicited.
Under Bill s.1618 Title III passed by the 105th U.S. Congress this mail cannot be considered Spam as long as we include Contact information and a method to be removed from our mailing list.
Somewhat technically true. Under that bill passed by the Senate in 1998, an “unsolicited commercial electronic mail message” must contain specific contact information and must stop further messages upon a reply that includes remove in the subject line. Several problems though. First, doing so doesn’t make it not spam (in fact the bill didn’t define spam) but rather makes it illegal if you don’t do so. Second, this bill, though it passed the Senate, never became law. While the email I received never claimed it was the law, the implication is clearly there. On a side note, they failed to include a physical address as required by this “bill.”
If you are not interested in receiving our e-mails then please enter “Please Remove” in the subject line and mention all the e-mail addresses to be removed, including any e-mail addresses which might be diverting the e-mails to you. Wait, I have to include ALL e-mail address that might be diverting email to me? I have like 50 of those. I’m not sending you a list of all my email addresses. Just remove the one you sent me this message from!
We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience. No you don’t. You can’t be remorseful in advance. Apology not accepted.