Things are extremely busy here so blogging is not getting quite the attention it should. I hope to return to more extensive posts soon. Meanwhile, you’ll have to put up with short posts. Today is a disclaimer I received in a spam. This is one of my addresses that has, somehow, ended up on UK-specific lists. Disclaimer: “Note:- We are not spammer. We found your email through manually...
I just got a call from someone claiming that I “filled out an online form” asking for more information about “an online education.” When pressed, the nice woman kept changing her story about who she was calling for or how she got my phone number. Eventually she admitted that they have a collection of 50 or more websites and it’s very possible that I didn’t give...
What are affiliate mailers? Affiliate mailers collect email addresses and then rent access to those addresses out to 3rd parties. There are a wide range of vendors that fall into the affiliate category. Some vendors compile lists through co-registration, others compile lists themselves through website opt-ins and some affiliate vendors fulfill mailing requests by hiring affiliates. There are, of...
Late last year, Al wrote a piece discussing how Spamarrest lost a court case. In the comments on that piece I described how much I really detest Spamarrest because of all the spam I get from Spamarrest users. Every few weeks, someone notices that post again and points it out to Spamarrest users who then come over here to tell me how wonderful Spamarrest is for them. I Get It. You like Spamarrest...
It’s no secret that I run very little in the way of spam filters, and what filters I do run don’t throw away mail, they just shove it into various mailboxes. Looking at my mailboxes currently I have 11216 unread messages in my mail.app junk folder, 10600 unread messages in my work spam assassin folder and 29401 messages in my personal spam assassin folder (mail getting more than +7 on...
I was doing some research about the evolution of the this-is-spam button for a blog article. In the middle of it, I found an old NY Times report about spam from 2003. At the same time, the argument is intensifying over what represents legitimate e-mail, particularly when it ends up being blocked by an antispam filter. Last November, AOL threatened to block e-mail from Gap. Even though Gap said it...
Tell someone they have hit a spamtrap and they go through a typical reaction cycle. Denial: I didn’t hit a trap! I only send opt-in mail. There must be some mistake. I’m a legitimate company, not a spammer! Anger: What do you mean that I can’t send mail until I’ve fixed the problem? There is no problem! You can’t stop me from mailing. I’m following the law. My...
This seems like an attempt to create the next big viral marketing campaign. It’s just spam, though, and not even good spam. There’s nothing about a random “click here” that will entice me to click on it. Scammers? Spammers? Whoever Ryann Rasmussen at HighSpeedInternet is, she might want to rethink her marketing strategy. It looks more like an infection attempt than...
Mention an email is spam to some senders and watch them dance around trying to explain all the ways they aren’t spammers. At some point, calling an email spam seems to have gone from a statement of fact into some sort of moral judgement on the sender. But calling an email spam is not a moral judgement. It’s just a statement of what a particular recipient thinks of an email. There are...
Neil has a post up about the “opt-in” form that we were all confronted with when logging into the hotel wifi at M3AAWG last week. They aren’t the only hotel asking for email addresses, I’ve seen other folks comment about how they were required to provide an email address AND opt-in to receive email offers before they were allowed onto the hotel network. Mind you...
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