You usually sign up for "company updates" or some such nomenclature, but after Bob's Discount Swords pivots to Improved Plowshares™, it's not really relevant anymore.

Then again, I actually fill out that little question after unsubscribing. The above I consider "legit" as long as unsubscribe works.

In my experience, you don't sign up for anything, but are automatically added to mailing lists against your will just for the sin of purchasing something. I never want to get emails from any company just because I purchased 1 item from them. Most people I know tell me they feel the same way, but instead of unsubscribing, they just mark it as spam and eventually it stops showing up in their inbox.

If I want emails from you, I will explicitly ask to be added to your mailing list. Anything else is spam as far as I'm concerned.

> just for the sin of purchasing something

Ah: prior commercial relationship. That's not spam, unless they ignore your unsubscribe request.

I hope you're not notifying the world that your preferred supplier of [X] is a spammer. I like to stay on good terms with my preferred suppliers.

illegal spam ⊆ spam

If I didn’t ask for it, it’s spam, regardless of whatever holes the US has punched in its definition to keep business owners happy.

> If it's not what you signed up for, isn't that pretty much the definition of spam?

Nope. There's not much point in relying on a "definition" of spam that is essentially subjective. "Hey, I signed up for your newsletter, but what you've sent me isn't news to me, or I just don't like it; so it's spam".

No,I don't think so. If you signed up to receive email, then it's going to be hard to show that you received email that's different from what you signed-up for. And if it's not Bulk, then it's simply email - not bulk, and not unsolicited.

That's why it's important that spam continues to be defined as Unsolicited Bulk Email.

>If you signed up to receive email, then it's going to be hard to show that you received email that's different from what you signed-up for.

At least in the EU, if you make a complaint, it falls on the sender to assert the legal basis for sending the email, so it's on them to prove informed consent (if that's the basis they're relying on).

> That's why it's important that spam continues to be defined as Unsolicited Bulk Email.

I'm not sure you've made the case that's important. In the EU, spam has been long defined as unsolicited commercial communications (since the E-privacy Directive in 2002) - no requirement for it to be in bulk.

> In the EU, spam has been long defined as unsolicited commercial communications

True. But spam has existed since long before EU regulators got interested; one type of spam that isn't covered by the EU rules is political spam. At one time I used to get a lot of political spam from US politicians and parties. I've never been a US citizen, and I don't get to vote in US elections - these politicians were spamming mailing lists.

The EU rules specifically exclude spam that isn't trying to sell you something for money. Why? Possibly because the rules are made by politicians, who prefer that their own spam isn't included.