Is it really so different from sharing something on facebook?
From my experience regular users sometimes prefer sharing with everyone instead of taking the time to select specific contacts. They don't really care, it's just email...
I've opted-in to be friends with someone on Facebook. I've opted-in to follow someone on Twitter. I have not opted-in to be in someone's contact list on Gmail. That's the big difference.
No I didn't. There's nothing stopping someone from finding my email address and sticking it in their contact list. How do you think spammers get email addresses in the first place? People give them their email addresses?
I saw the email from a contact, clicked through and saw that your app only asks for "view contacts" so I though I'd be able to choose to whom I'd send an email or at least have some kind of confirmation before all of a sudden "BAM" you send thousands of emails to everyone I've emailed in the past 5 years.
That's really bad. You have to improve the UX/UI so that there's a bit of granularity and more transparency otherwise, you're going to lose your Google API access... or simply disappear as everyone marks your emails as spam.
I think this is a minimum. Optimally you'd have a UI which allows you to choose with whom to share... otherwise it's simply not pertinent for so many people and thus simply spam.
You (and I'm assuming you're the person who came up with this) need to think about it from the perspective of email recipients, because they're the ones who are going to be directly affected by this button.
You don't say at all how this works. Do you scrape the email addresses? What does the email look like? Does it have any sort of opt-out mechanism?
How do emails sent by this conform to Canada's anti-spam legislation, or any other country's anti-spam legislation?
So my mom clicks this button on a website. I'm supposed to block all of her emails because she did so and I don't want to get your emails again?
I think you really need to think this through again, because there are fundamental problems that you're not getting. Emails sent this way will be considered as spam, and you'll piss off people receiving the emails, and they'll be pissed off at the person who clicked the button, and then that person will get pissed off at you, which I don't think you want.
I don't know if it's illegal. I do know that it's perfectly moral. I mean, it's just email... It's not like I'm tricking people into giving me money...
I think responses in this thread are somewhat lacking a sense of humor
But if it is a joke site it's attempting to parody bad marketers and they are viciously stupid and thus your parody is indistinguishable from stuff they actually do.
Project Gutenberg started when Michael Hart tried to email copies of the American Declaration of Independence to everyone on his local network; they were not amused and so he set up a website instead.
If you do not have a confirmed, opt-in, agreement with people you're sending bulk email to you need to be very careful or you risk losing internet connectivity. You're not warning your customers about that.
You're also violating parts of Google's tos. Lucky for you Google refuse to take any form of contact from the outside world so your service will survive until someone there notices it.
Even if I did want to share something with all my contacts on Gmail, the other challenge is that Gmail considers EVERYONE you have ever emailed a "contact". That's hundreds and hundreds of people, old mailing lists, etc. etc. that are on there. It's not a "contact list", it's a list of everyone I have ever contacted.
Sure -- just move to a small, isolated foreign country and set up an email distribution system that relies on compromised windows machines (i.e. bots) instead of your Gmail account.
In other words, these limits are in place for a reason. If the Gmail ecosystem didn't stop you from sending 25 simultaneous emails, you might lose all your friends instead.
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[ 0.30 ms ] story [ 72.6 ms ] threadWould you consider putting this on your site? If not, why?
You put 'you' instead of 'your'.
From my experience regular users sometimes prefer sharing with everyone instead of taking the time to select specific contacts. They don't really care, it's just email...
I saw the email from a contact, clicked through and saw that your app only asks for "view contacts" so I though I'd be able to choose to whom I'd send an email or at least have some kind of confirmation before all of a sudden "BAM" you send thousands of emails to everyone I've emailed in the past 5 years.
That's really bad. You have to improve the UX/UI so that there's a bit of granularity and more transparency otherwise, you're going to lose your Google API access... or simply disappear as everyone marks your emails as spam.
You don't say at all how this works. Do you scrape the email addresses? What does the email look like? Does it have any sort of opt-out mechanism?
How do emails sent by this conform to Canada's anti-spam legislation, or any other country's anti-spam legislation?
Currently the email is plain-text, but in the future paying customers can customize the email sent
You can opt-out simply by filtering out emails sent from your past contacts, who you do not wish to receive emails from.
I think you really need to think this through again, because there are fundamental problems that you're not getting. Emails sent this way will be considered as spam, and you'll piss off people receiving the emails, and they'll be pissed off at the person who clicked the button, and then that person will get pissed off at you, which I don't think you want.
While your customers are the ones breaking the law you might find your network access increasingly restricted.
I wish there was a better version of NANAE still around.
I think responses in this thread are somewhat lacking a sense of humor
But if it is a joke site it's attempting to parody bad marketers and they are viciously stupid and thus your parody is indistinguishable from stuff they actually do.
Project Gutenberg started when Michael Hart tried to email copies of the American Declaration of Independence to everyone on his local network; they were not amused and so he set up a website instead.
The first commercial email spam was probably the DEC spam to all Arpanet. http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamreact.html
If you do not have a confirmed, opt-in, agreement with people you're sending bulk email to you need to be very careful or you risk losing internet connectivity. You're not warning your customers about that.
You're also violating parts of Google's tos. Lucky for you Google refuse to take any form of contact from the outside world so your service will survive until someone there notices it.
In the U.S., unless you have a business relationship with the recipients, it's both illegal and immoral. It violates the U.S. federal Can-Spam Act.
> I think responses in this thread are somewhat lacking a sense of humor
I want to see the smile on your face when you're arrested for providing an easy way to violate the law en masse.
Regarding annoying people, however,...
In other words, these limits are in place for a reason. If the Gmail ecosystem didn't stop you from sending 25 simultaneous emails, you might lose all your friends instead.