As a guerrilla warrior against spam, both personally and professionally, I applaud your decision to reject the proposal. A lot of businesses and people wouldn't have. Love your reply to Natasha. You earned yet another star in my book. :)

I wouldn't have obscured her email address :)

I wish you dug deeper to find the actual source of the information. I'm guessing it must be from a popular .NET community/product site that requires this information to use/join/download from their website.

Wouldn't surprise me if it was experts-exchange.

It has to be European website because she mentions the opt-in email addresses.

i'm guessing your blog has more than 13k followers....

If ever you consider leaving the field of software/IT, might I suggest becoming a diplomat?

Of course you choose not to ignore these emails; instead you have to reply to them and moreover blog about them. Go find a doctor.

Dmitry - I wasn't aware Australia was in the EU. ;)

Many countries have anti-spam laws requiring you to opt-in to mailing lists.

One word for you Natasha: Owned.

The sad part is that, for one Ayende that refuses that sort of immoral spamming, probably there are 10 others that would surely pay for such a list. :(

She said it was an opt-in list. People know how to uncheck a box if they don't want to deal with third-party ads. Is it any different than paying to be a vendor at a conference for access to the attendee list? Now if you were to send them a "you won the lottery" email instead of legitimate business related message, then that would be somewhat unscrupulous. But there's nothing wrong with sending legitimate business email to a list obtained legitimately.

Spammers are being pushed hard now and they are finding new options.

For those who don't know, SPAM rules are enforced pretty stringent now. You can file SPAM report and the person can loose domain, hosting and whole track!. CAN-SPAM Act does specify "illegally harvesting email addresses" as a breach. Think a million times before SPAMMING!