At this stage I have received 5 emails from namesdatabase.com – all of which were reminders about an invite I received some time ago from someone else. What I don’t get though – is the constant reminders. They cut a very very fine line between a notification and pure spam. If I actually wanted to join the service (which I don’t) I would have responded to the first. But those reminders just keep on coming…

The result of course is that thousands will probably join just to stop the friggin’ reminder spam ;-).

The site, in its support page for emailing states in a very self-conscious way:

Please first understand that all email sent by The Names Database was authorized by someone other than us. We do not send spam of any kind, and as such, do not send email that was not authorized by someone other than us at some point in the past. Every email address that we have was entered by one of our customers, and we record timestamp and ip address information associated with each address.

Does that apply to the 5 follow up emails when I deleted the first one? Did someone click a checkbox that said “By the way, we’ll keep reminding this person until they join or click some other link validating their email address”?

I know there are so many definitions and perceptions of spam – but for me it’s always simple. If it’s unsolicited, repeating a prior singlular email instance, and is not from any site or person who would have a reason for emailing me – it’s spam. It belongs in the trash can, and flagged as junk mail.

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