Chicago Tribune Spamming

Just got an e-mail full of "Holiday Shopping Deals from ShopLocal" from the Chicago Tribune. Whenever I register for newspaper sites, I always make sure to uncheck the boxes for e-mail communication, so that I don't get "offers" like this. But many times, I still do. And when I get something from what I consider to be a reputable publisher, I always unsubscribe.

Not so with the Chicago Tribune mailing. When I click the "unsubscribe" link in their e-mail, I'm told I have to log in with a password I didn't know I had in order to change my preferences and get off their list. Conveniently, the site pretends that the e-mail address it sent the spam to doesn't exist in its system, so I have to figure out what my user name and password are in order to opt out.

The Chicago Tribune should know that we have ways of fighting this kind of spamming behavior. The first way is through posting to my blog. The second way is by labeling their communication as Spam, so that everyone else who uses Cloudmark will have it labeled as Spam, too.