[stuart78]

There is an ethical way to market products which relies on transparency to the audience and not tricking or repurposing leads for secondary purposes. Blocking more of these shady tactics makes it easier to do the right thing and requires you to build marketing programs for and around people who actually want your offering.

[doodlebugging]

One of the problems that I can see in building that marketing program for those who really want the service or product is that many of these transactions are one time transactions in that at the conclusion of the transaction, the customer no longer has a need for or interest in that service or product and so they are effectively a dead lead. Continuing to contact "potential customers" to sell them something they don't need will always be seen as an annoyance. There has to be a process for customer contact info to be scrubbed from the lists once a transaction has been completed.

For example if I contact someone about long-distance transport of a vehicle I end up with dozens of calls and emails from companies claiming to be drivers all of whom will do it for the lowest price. Over time I select one of these companies or find another somewhere else. However, it can take months for the contacts to taper off with the email spam being the last thing to shut down. It is obvious that you only need to contact one company thru their website in order to get on the list of potential customers so they all sell contact info to each other. The last time I got an email reminding me that they are ready to transport my vehicle it had been two years since that vehicle was transported to me. This stale contact info has to be a drag on the system somewhere. I just mark all as spam and forget about it.

[rqtwteye]

Totally agree. Problem is that a lot of industries got way too used to shady practices. Especially online.

[prepend]

I think the other problem, more serious I think, is that shady practices make more money. I like to think in the long term honest practices make more money from lifetime customer value, but cynically fear that from a profit maximization standpoint shady results in most money for the industry.