In article <2u6ts2F270ickU1@uni-berlin.de>,
Jeff Folloder (TES) <jeff@folloder.com> wrote:

So you're saying that it is okay for non-profits to spam?  I did not ask 

I wasn't saying that; I was saying that non-profits typically offer
incentives, like membership cards, for contributions.

However, having said that, junk paper mailing from charities is not that
uncommon in the UK and various parts of my old university (one of the
old ones) are always sending me things in the hope that I will make a
large donation to them, either immediately, or in my will (that's what
university alumni organisations are there for).  Paper junk mail generally
doesn't have the level of stigma that is associated with electronic junk,
because the costs are non-trivial and are borne by the sender.

Paper junk mail existed long before spam and probably accounts for most
of the US Postal Service's profits.  Spam was coined to specifically
refer to junk newsgroup postings, although then extended to email.

Anything like that that Berkeley sends would be sent bulk, as they don't
have the resources to do otherwise.   The SETI Institute wouldn't have
your address on the basis of S@H participation.

Then how did they get my information?

I've no idea, but Berkeley never request a snail mail address for 
S@H, so one can assume that they didn't get it from there.
If you actually wrote to them, I imagine that they don't get enough
paper mail to make it worth trying to capture addresses.

To guess, I'd need to know what science based organisations you belong to,
whether you have a science based degree (your college may have sold
the address), what consumer surveys you've recently completed, both
standalone, and as part of a product registration (which is often about
market research and building mailing lists, rather than giving a 
warrantee), what technical magazines you subscribe to, etc., etc.

A technique that some people use, is to include some bogus information
in their address, which doesn't frustrate delivery, but allows you them
to track its re-use.  Mail order advertisers often do this to identify
the source of advertising from which the order came.

Incidentally, when I tried the TeamSETI link, the certificate matched
the domain name, although it was their funding processor's not the
Institute's name domain name.