Spam by Any Other Name

It's one thing to sign me up for spam. It's another for a company to do it and claim it's some kind of benefit.

Someone (who shall not be named) sent me a link to a property that was on Zillow.com yesterday. This was fine, as I've been thinking about such things lately, but what happened next was surprising. I got an email from Zillow:

Since a home was recently shared with you, we created a free Zillow account for you to browse millions of homes, save and share your favorites, connect with professionals and shop mortgages.

 

Seriously?! Not only did this indicate that the spam would start, but it also created an account on a site I'd never used nor wanted. I had to go delete it and unsubscribe. Now yes, it's one thing for someone to sign you up for spam. It happens. But that's typically someone pretending to be you, and one would hope that in 2017, double-confirmation would happen. In this case, however, Zillow knew that the account they were creating was for someone that hadn't visited their site and, as you can see from the message I got, I wasn't asked if I wanted the account. They just created it as if they were doing me some kind of favor.

Zillow? FAIL.