Qualified With Condition

Spam comes in so many forms and in so many ways. Sometimes spam is subtle. Very subtle.

I received an email from a Canadian IT publishing company. It began like this:

As a senior *IT executive, please accept our invitation to apply for registration… to a unique think-tank retreat.

Hmmm. Apply for registration. That’s odd. Isn’t that like applying for a job? Will I need to provide references as well? And what is it with the asterisk?

Ah. The asterisk is reference to a footnote at the end of the email which includes the following qualifier:

*IT Executives are defined as those who are attending the conference with an intent (and an IT spending budget) to potentially buy or lease hardware, software, services from our conference sponsors.

Unique think-tank or a prolonged sales pitch? Who cares.

Spam.

Delete.