[Yes, the title of this post is purposefully written that way based on the name of the movie I was spammed with.]
I use unique email aliases whenever I sign up for something, making it easy for me to turn off an email address if I find it gets abused. Amazingly enough, in all the years I’ve been using this tactic (it’s got to be nearly a decade by now), I’ve only had two clear instances of someone using an email address they shouldn’t be. One was a software development company last year (their President thought it would be ok to take a copy of the customer database to a new company he was launching), and the other is Paramount Pictures. Look at the email address I received this message to:
That’s right, I signed up for information about the forthcoming Iron Man movie (I really hope it lives up to the hype!), and Paramount decided to send me information about “How She Move” without my permission. I’m 99.999% sure that I didn’t opt in for anything other than info about Iron Man, but when I checked their database for my email address, it said I was signed up for something called “Paramount Vantage”. The Paramount sign-up tool for Iron Man information doesn’t have an option for Paramount Vantage, only for “other Paramount movies”, sharing information with “Other Viacom companies”, and the Marvel newsletter. I said yes to the Marvel newsletter, and no to everything else…I think.
I want to be fair to Paramount, so I’ve signed up again with another unique email alias, making sure that no additional options were checked. I’ll wait and see what happens…but it sure ticks me off when companies use email addresses beyond the permission given by the owner of that email address.