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I've said it before in response to these sorts of articles, and I'll say it again: if these people wanted random people "cold emailing" (what a weasel term for
by npsimons 13y ago
I've said it before in response to these sorts of articles, and I'll say it again: if these people wanted random people "cold emailing" (what a weasel term for spamming), they'd have put their email address in a more accessible place.
Sure, you always hear the stories of "how I got X interviews by randomly emailing people", and you can argue it shows technical aptitude, but that doesn't make it any less scummy, and it completely ignores the dozens (hundreds?) of people you are now blacklisted by for doing such an asinine thing.
I tip my hat to the OP of this article for not posting source code (although if he did, would that accelerate the response to make these sorts of attacks infeasible?) and for not abusing it (at least by his standards).
- manuelflara 13y agoI don't think cold emailing should be considered spam. For me spam has to be a) random: send a commercial email to any address we can find, doesn't matter who's is it. b) massive: if you just send 10-20 emails I wouldn't qualify that as spam. For example: If I have a product whose customers are startups (they are likely to improve their lives/business by using my tool), why wouldn't they want me to figure out their email (using a method like this) and email them about it directly? They might not be interested, in which case they can delete it, but it's not like you're sending them generic viagra or enlarge your penis spam.
- s3cur3 13y agoSpam is in the eye of the beholder. When my wife goes through our (physical) mail, she complains about how 90% of it is "junk," but her eyes light up at the 20% off coupon from Bed, Bath, & Beyond addressed to "Current Resident." If your message is relevant and valuable, the receiver doesn't see it as spam, regardless of whether they've heard of you.