Re: anybody here from facebook?

[Rich Kulawiec <rsk () gsp org>]

On Tue, May 04, 2010 at 08:14:21AM -0700, Wim Lewis wrote:
> It's annoying, but is it spam? 

Absolutely yes: it fully complies with the canonical definition of spam:

                unsolicited bulk email

Note that this definition does not specify (and this is quite deliberate):

        messages all sent with same putative sender information
        messages all sent to the same recipient
        messages all sent with the same salient content
        messages all sent at once
        messages sent during a particular period of time
        messages whose bulk nature is immediately evident
        messages with any particular kind of content

among a number of other things.  This set of omissions is frequently
questioned by novices (and is often disputed by spammers), but it's
necessary; if these were specified, then abusers could argue that their
abuse isn't spam because (for example) it wasn't all sent within a
certain time window.

Thus, in this particular case:

        - these notices are clearly email
        - they are clearly unsolicited *by the recipients*; of course
                the wishes of the sender don't matter a whit
        - they are clearly sent in bulk

Case closed, period, full stop.  We need not concern ourselves with
irrelevant details like the content, or the forged sender (which is
also abusive, but that abuse issue is orthogonal to this one), or
the privacy issues involved in harvesting address books, or any of
that.  These are all interesting points, but none of them change
the indisputable fact that Facebook is spamming.

Note that Facebook, like other spammers, frequently tries to foist off
responsibility for its abusive activity on its users: while certainly
they bear some measure of responsibility for handing over information
to Facebook, the bottom line is that this spam comes from Facebook's
mail servers on Facebook's network, therefore it's Facebook's spam.

---Rsk
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