cshen.ca

I have received emails from the BC Liberals for a while now, every time I get one, I mark it as spam. Why? Because every single email the BC Liberals has ever sent me, is spam. Most of the emails I mark as spam without reading, but from the ones with titles ambiguous enough that I’d click on it, it’s evident that my email was added to some mailing list for BC Liberals propaganda. All form letters, many of which designed to get their supporters do to something.

I have never signed up to any BC Liberals spam list, in fact I have never given them my email address by any means. Their frequent emails are wholly unsolicited and unwanted. How did my address end up on their spam list? My best guess is that a Liberal supporter/organizer who shall remain unnamed took some unrequested liberty with use of my email address. I gave him my email to continue a conversation about some BCYL event I was marginally interested in, nothing was mentioned about being added to a spam list. I decided that the event wouldn’t have worked out with my schedule, and that should have been it, but soon I started receiving BC Liberal spam. Correlated much?

Worse yet, there’s no unsubscribe link. The last time I got an email from the BC Liberals, I replied and asked to be removed from the list. I received yet another piece of spam just now, which asks me to blog about the BC Liberals. So for this one time, I’ll oblige with the request. I’ll even reproduce said spam:

Hi Chen,

As you may remember from my last email, Facebook support is the new benchmark used by the media for determining the popularity of a candidate or political party. However, the media have also started to use blogs as a source for stories and opinion.

I would strongly encourage you to consider starting your own blog just like BCYL member Geoff Sharpe has. After only a few days online, Geoff’s blog is averaging over 200 hits a day. Check out Geoff’s blog at link removed.

It’s also important to comment on blogs and let other readers (which include media pundits) know what you think. The following link will take you to a list of provincial blogs: link removed

Finally, I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to become a supporter of the Premier on Facebook. Please take a couple minutes to do that now by following this link: link removed

You can also become a supporter of me on Facebook by going to: link removed

I hope you will decide to start your own blog. Please send me the address if you do set one up and if you need any help, get in touch with me and I’ll put you in touch with some people, like Geoff, who have blogs already and can help you get started.

I look forward to reading your thoughts online.

Cheers,
Donny

Donny van Dyk
Candidate – Skeena Riding
BC Liberal Party

Curious that a mailing list capable of adding the recipient’s name at the top doesn’t even have an unsubscribe link. Or did the BC Liberals just disable that function? I’m betting on the latter.

Be it being added to the BC Liberals spam list in the first place, or being unable to unsubscribe after the fact, it’s revealing to note the lack of basic ethics BC Liberals representatives display. Spamming is bad, continuing to spam despite a request to stop is worse, using people’s email addresses without consent is worst. I’d like to say that the BC Liberals just lost my vote, unfortunately they never had it to begin with. Hopefully, though, the spamming is going to cost them much more than just one vote.