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Spam works

I got a spam today advertising spamming services that ended with a tagline that can be paraphrased: We managed to spam you, let us spam others on your behalf!
OK, so what they actually said was:

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Email marketing firm smacked by the SEC

Yes, the SEC. Really.
Apparently the email marketing firm mUrgent, which provides services to the restaurant and hospitality industry also had a side business. According to the complaint filed by the SEC last month, they had an entire boiler room set up to sell shares for their non-existent IPO.
I’d never heard of this firm before, so I did a little digging. First step, check out their website.

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Another kind of email breach

In all the recent discussions of email address thievery I’ve not seen anyone mention stealing addresses by abusing the legal system. And, yet, there’s at least one ambulance chasing lawyer that’s using email addresses that were never given to him by the recipients. Even worse, when asked about it he said that the courts told him he could use the email address and that we recipients had no recourse.
I’m not sure the spammer is necessarily wrong, but it’s a frustrating situation for both the recipient and the company that had their address list stolen.
A few years ago, law firm of Bursor and Fisher filed a host of class action lawsuits against various wireless carriers, including AT&T. At one point during the AT&T lawsuit the judge ruled that AT&T turn over their customer list, including email addresses, to Bursor and Fisher. Bursor and Fisher were then to send notices to all the AT&T subscribers notifying them of the suit.
This is not unreasonable. Contacting consumers by email to notify them of legal action makes a certain amount of sense.
But then Bursor and Fisher took it a step further. They looked at all these valid email addresses and decided they could use this for their own purposes. They started mailing advertisements to the AT&T wireless list.

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