ASDA, Marks & Spencer, and Topshop, some of the UK's biggest brands, have been accused of using spam-like tactics by spam monitoring firm Spam Ratings. Spam, spam, spam.
With more than 75 percent of emails coming from UK businesses labelled as unwanted and unsolicited, Spam Ratings has discovered that some leading companies are no better than the nearest botnet.
It was revealed that ASDA, M&S, and Topshop all fail to comply with spam regulations designed by the Direct Marketing Association and Information Commissioner's Office, both of which require that companies ask permission from customers before signing them up to mailing lists.
The big name companies were found to be in breach of this by Spam Ratings, using hidden default mailing list sign-ups as part of joining a website or selling on customer's details to other companies, which customers never agreed to.
Spamnet looked at 10,000 websites over a 12-month period, discovering that 40 percent of them sent “potentially dangerous” emails, while 30 percent sent unsolicited emails from third parties. Spam Ratings was particularly concerned about this selling on of customer details, which it said was on a “worrying scale”.
Because these messages come from trusted brand names, many do not see them as spam, even though they abide by conventional descriptions of what spam is and how it is delivered. The trend suggests that many users are prepared to accept unsolicited emails if it is a company they know about.
“It's amazing how many of us appear to accept spam and the everyday dangers and growing nuisance it brings,” said Andy Yates, co-founder of Spam Ratings.
“It shouldn't be like this - and it doesn't have to be. Spam really isn't a mystery. It comes from websites we sign up to who send us emails we haven't asked for, or worse still sell on our details to potentially dangerous third parties.”
ASDA got in touch with us and said: "We always ask our customers if they want to receive emails from us – we never send unsolicited emails. When we do send an email there is always the option to unsubscribe and we never sell on customer data to third parties.
"In fact, the only spam on offer at Asda are the fritters at 2 for £3."
The best option for organisations to opt for an EMAIL cleansing service, these essentially remove all the known spam and malicious content before reaching the inbox. Then at regular intervals throughout the day a summary of suspected spam is sent to the recipient to review, if it looks like it’s something you’re interested in having delivered, just accept. If not just ignore!
To clarify our research - the number of unwanted emails continues to grow rapidly and our study of 10,000 sites found that a very worrying two in every five sites sent emails that were not explicitly asked for.
So we are calling on all businesses, including Asda and other leading brands, to show that they are willing to comply with industry best practice. They are a very respected company. They should have a very respected email policy.
I would like to ask Asda if they acknowledge that they are not complying with email marketing best practice set down by the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK’s data protection authority, and the Direct Marketing Association, the marketing industry’s own trade body?
These important bodies clearly state that customers should proactively consent to receive emails and that pre-ticking opt in boxes for customers is not best practice. Despite this Asda shows pre-ticked boxes on the Asda grocery shopping and Asda Direct websites.
This policy can only lead to users getting emails they have not explicitly chosen to receive. Therefore, I would also like to ask why doesn’t Asda and other brands give users a fair and open choice and allow them to opt in to emails themselves?
We are very happy to discuss this further with Asda and work out how we can help companies to meet best practice guidelines and avoid sending unwanted emails.
We also call on other businesses to go to www.spamratings.com and look at their own current spam rating and support our mission to stop the huge and growing problem of unwanted emails.