Greetings. On May 10, I reported apparent spamming from CVS/pharmacy. At the time, a CVS spokesman suggested to me that customers likely were providing the wrong e-mail addresses, and admitted that e-mail address verification on those submitted addresses was perhaps not being done in at least some cases before starting solicitations.

This didn't seem an adequate explanation, especially given the e-mail address to which I've received these unsolicited CVS mailings.

The reality is clearer today -- CVS has now admitted to me that they have been sending offers to e-mail addresses obtained from a third-party e-mail address "matching" service.

Such services usually attempt to "guess" an e-mail address (in this case for CVS "ExtraCare" members who declined to provide one) based on other customer-provided information. These services can have major inaccuracy problems, since there is no sure way to do such e-mail address matching. The result is often sending materials to the wrong persons.

This would still seem to qualify under most definitions as spamming, even if an initial "may we use this address?" message was sent first (a common spam bait technique), and in my case and others I've heard about the spams just started without prior e-mail address contacts.

If people wanted to provide an e-mail address to CVS or anyone else, they would do so. Using a matching service is undermining that choice, even if an accurate e-mail address happens to be listed by the service. The use of e-mail addresses not directly provided by the customer, or use of customer-provided addresses that have not been verified and confirmed via e-mail before associated e-mail solicitations begin, can easily result in spamming in the view of many or most jurisdictions, as far as I know.

CVS points out that they have a customer service toll-free phone number and e-mail address on their Web site, which is appreciated, but isn't the point.

Unsolicited commercial e-mail is spam, and use of third-party services to obtain e-mail addresses is asking for trouble.

--Lauren--