Damned Spammers

Well damn. This tem­po­rary part-time data entry thing has been hard on my body, but we need­ed the cash so I was try­ing to just push through. But now they’re ask­ing me to do some­thing unethical.

You know those slips of paper you fill out in stores to enter draw­ings, that have a place for you to check to con­sent to being added to their mail­ing lists? I’m sit­ting here with hun­dreds of those slips of paper from a large store. The num­ber of peo­ple who have checked that box is pret­ty much non-exis­tent. I’m sup­posed to enter all of them in the data­base to be added to the snail and email mail­ing lists any­way. There is absolute­ly no way to say whether or not the per­son consented—consent is assumed.

While I don’t give out infor­ma­tion unless I’m will­ing to have it used, I hate dis­hon­esty. Hav­ing that “add me to your mail­ing list” box implies that the address­es will not be added to a mail­ing list unless it is checked. And this is a Very Big Store—not some crap­py lit­tle out­fit. They have a good rep­u­ta­tion, so few peo­ple would hes­i­tate to give them pri­vate information.

But any­thing sent to these address­es for peo­ple who did­n’t con­sent is spam. And I don’t help spammers.

Dammit.