Hope I am in the right place for this type of question. I am a developer that would like to start up a little project that is kind of a social experiment.
The idea is that I setup a mailing bot with a list of emails (say a few million from a online email dump). This bot will send an email that is somewhat misleading, maybe notifying the user they may have won a prize with a link to collect it.
The idea being that I can notify the user once the link is clicked that this was a fake mail designed to spread awareness of scam emails/virus emails and how easy it is to be tricked.
I would also like to collect this information and display on a webpage how many emails are sent out and how many people have clicked the link.
With the information I could collect it anonymously (not linked to the email address) but it would be better to put it against the email so they can visit the site later and see more stats about the project/social experiment.
So the overall question is... Is this possible to do without being in any sort of trouble with laws etc? This will be a worldwide project and poses no threat other than being classed as a spam email.