Romer (Hanov3r) , a long-time anti-spammer acquaintance, blogged today about a breathtakingly arrogant, and frankly stupid, action by Kodak Corporation. Some years ago he gave the Kodak Gallery, a photograph posting site, his email address for some purpose that he now forgets. Today, Kodak informed in that he had been opted in without his consent to a marketing offers list about other Kodak products not associated with the Kodak Gallery. The email told him to opt-out if he objected.
In anti-spam parlance, taking an email address that you were given for one reason and using it for a different reason is called repurposing that email address. Repurposing is unethical, a violation of trust, and (most important) turns what was solicited bulk email (which is legitimate) into unsolicited bulk email (which is spam). Bulk email about things that the user did not ask about is unsolicited bulk email, and unsolicited bulk email is spam. In other words, Kodak Corporation just spammed a customer of theirs who works for an antispam company.
This qualifies for at least an honorable mention in the corporate Darwin awards. :(