We were wrong when we told you last week that Arial Software didn't ID the three spammers it uncovered in its six-month undercover study of email marketing practices.

The three got busted in a related report intended to reassure consumers that they won't get spammed if they opt in to email newsletters from reputable companies.

The three, all freebie-giveaway sites, are Prizeomatic.com, freebiepeople.com and memolink.com .

The report suggests that no consumers "in their right minds" would mistake any of these for Fortune 500-level emailers, but that's beside the point.

Consumers will report even opt-in email from Fortune-500 companies as spam when it comes too often, becomes irrelevant or irritates them in some other inexplicable way.
What's the most likely way? Forcing consumers to uncheck the box giving permission to share their names with third-party advertisers.

Check out Arial's spam audit and the CAN-SPAM compliance survey mentioned last week (you don't even have to register for them):
http://www.arialsoftware.com/whitepapers/SpamAudit2004.pdf