Spam From an Unexpected Source

Last year I signed my mother up for a free subscription to Biography magazine. Little did I know that the “free” came at the expense of being stuck in their system for all eternity.

Every now and then the address I signed up with gets an email from A&E.; I have unsubscribed from the newsletter numerous times, each time receiving a “Successful Unsubscribe” receipt. And yet the emails keep coming. Granted it’s not nearly as much as spammers send, but unwanted mail is unwanted mail, no matter how little it is.

The emails come from different addresses the way that spam does. I have gotten the A&E; newsletters from the following addresses:

ae-insider-notifications@newsletters.aetv.com
ae-insider-one@newsletters.aetv.com
clubfeedback@aetv.com
ae-club-surveys@newsletters.aetv.com
ae-club-one@newsletters.aetv.com
ae-club@newsletters.aetv.com
bioclub@newsletters.aetv.com
bioclub-one@newsletters.aetv.com
biographyclub@aetv.com

They just keep changing the from address and keep on spamming. Apparently you have to unsubscribe from each address separately. Worse still, your address isn’t removed from their system, it’s just flagged for removal from that specific address’ mailing list. Next time that the send the newsletter, they change their from address and send it to you again. Frankly, the unsubscribe option is worthless since they won’t be using that address to send the next one anyway.

It’s very surprising and disappointing that A&E; would resort to spamming and using spamming techniques.

I sent a strongly worded letter through their contact web page demanding that they remove the address from all of their systems permanently. We’ll know whether it worked or not in a month or two.

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