Definition of SPAM
Update: Oct. 23, 2003
From: Brian Morrissey
Senior Editor
dmnews.com, Oct. 23, 2003
Stepping into the void created by the Direct Marketing Association's refusal to define spam, three interactive associations joined forces yesterday to call it unsolicited commercial e-mail.
The definition is the centerpiece of an e-mail marketing pledge endorsed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the Network Advertising Initiative's E-mail Service Provider Coalition and privacy group TRUSTe.
The pledge defines spam as:
“commercial e-mail sent without an existing business relationship or prior informed consent.” Informed consent is defined as any of three forms of opt-in: single opt-in, confirmed opt-in and double opt-in.
The pledge comes, in part, as a riposte to the DMA's contention that spam is e-mail sent by fraudulent means. On a number of occasions, the DMA has declined to define spam as unsolicited commercial e-mail, arguing that, for consumers, spam is in the eye of the beholder.
Given the recent controversies within the marketing community in America in defining SPAM, with clarity and accuracy, mail-production.com here lists its unqualified meaning: 
“A species of communication, issued electronically by way of email, which contains a written or audible message, or transports any idea, story, text or visual image, the same capable of becoming impure through artifice or misrepresentation; and which conveys any seemingly pure or genuine message, sound, or content, either true or false, or which refers to the web page, site, interface, mechanism, or return address of any person or group, real or imagined, it having been sent at any time by any device or living sender.” © October 20, 2003; mail-production.com
This can essentially be thought of safely as “any email you have ever received up until this time.”
SPAM is Not Safe–It Can Never Be Trusted
EMAIL is Not Safe–It Can Never Be Trusted
Why is this all-inclusive assumption necessary? Because no matter what degree of protective caution is put into place by computer users to certify the safety of email, any precaution taken can be undone by another skilled person or program that understands its mechanics and wishes to spoof it or corrupt it. Up until the date of this writing, at the current state of computer science, the above caveat is altogether true.
In trusting email, the person in reliance enters into a risk equation the danger of which is always greater than zero. In plain terms, for any marketing or commercial purpose, transmitted email can never be considered as safe as any other regulated medium because spammers do not observe nor adhere to the rule of law laid down in their control; and this annoyance in their behavior is precisely why many spam operations are criminal, in their deed and in their desire.
Caution: The authenticity of the definition first above cannot be relied upon as wholesome and true unless its verbatim accuracy is separately verified in-person by its author at the business offices of its authorized publishing authority. The nature, wording and meaning of the above definition is subject to change without notice. Any reliance on any definition found at this site is strictly at the risk and sole discretion of the reader, and is here given without warranty or implied fitness for any purpose by its author.
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