> Would you consider it spam if someone manually went to a site, found their contact information, and sent them an email by hand? It appears to fit the same def

> Would you consider it spam if someone manually went to a site, found their contact information, and sent them an email by hand? It appears to fit the same definition as "unsolicited", and yet, that is one of the purposes of a business placing their email address on their website. That depends. Clearly a business selling computers that posts its email address on its website does want to receive emails from people who want to buy computers. They maybe even want to receive emails from people selling computers. What they likely don’t want are emails from people selling cars. Someone running a blog on X with an email address on the blog will likely want to receive comments about the texts he’s written there, but probably not an email on how to buy more X. As a general rule, if you or someone else plans to make money from the action incited by the email, it is most likely spam (not from a legal, but ‘moral’ perspective). This is especially true if the recipient is a private person and and you (or the third party profiting from the email) are a business. Or, put another way: If you wouldn’t be allowed to call them, you aren’t allowed to send them email (modulo the cases were people opted in to you contacting them by email but not by telephone).