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Fake privacy policies

I sign up at a lot of websites and liberally spray email addresses across the net. These signups are on behalf of one customer or another and each webform gets its own tagged and tracked email address. I always have a specific goal with each signup: getting a copy of a customer’s email, checking their signup process, auditing an affiliate on behalf of a customer or identifying where there might be a problem in a process. Because I have specific goals, I am pretty careful with these signups and usually uncheck every “share my email address” box I can find on the forms.
In every case the privacy policies of my clients and the things they tell me are explicit in that addresses will not be shared. It’s all opt-in, and email addresses are not shared without permission. Even in the cases where I am auditing affiliates, my clients assure me that if I follow this exact process my address will not be shared. Or so the affiliates have assured them.
Despite my care and the privacy policies on the websites, these addresses occasionally leak or are sold. This is actually very rare, and most of the websites I test never do anything with my address that I don’t expect. But in a couple cases these email addresses have ended up in the hands of some hard core spammers (hundreds of emails a day) and there was no useful tracking I could do. In other cases the volume has been lower, and I’ve watched the progression of my email addresses being bought and sold with morbid fascination.
Today an address I signed up at a website about a year ago got hit with multiple spams in a short time frame. All came from different IPs in the same /24. All had different domains with no websites. Whois showed all the domains were registered behind a privacy protection service. Interestingly, two of the domains used the same CAN SPAM address. The third had no CAN SPAM address at all. None of these addresses match the data I have on file related to the email signup.
It never ceases to amaze me how dishonest some address collection outfits. Their websites state clearly that addresses will not be bought an sold, and yet the addresses get lots of spam unrelated to the original signup. For those dishonest enough to do this they’ll never get caught unless recipients tags and tracks all their signups. Even worse, unless their partners test their signups or their mailing practices, the partners may end up unwittingly sending spam.

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Jon Leibowitz: New FTC chair

Jon Leibowitz is slated to be appointed the new chair of the FTC as reported by Bloomberg and CNet. This may mean tougher regulations online. In the past Mr. Leibowitz has advocated that online advertisers move to opt-in for website cookies. This may signal his intention to put more control in the hands of the consumer. According to Bloomberg, Mr. Leibowitz has also “advocated more aggressive enforcement by the FTC.” We may see more CAN SPAM prosecutions as a result.

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Words of wisdom from the hallway

Sitting around talking with folks in the hallway. One ISP rep mentions “we think we have found another front company of theirs…”
My only comment was “If a company needs to create a front company…” We all just looked at each other and didn’t need to come up with the “then…”
Really, if a sender thinks they must establish front companies to get connectivity or get customers or get delivery… then this is an admission of guilt.

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