Monday I published a blog post about the ongoing B2B spam and how annoying it is. I get so many of these they’re becoming an actual problem. 3, 4, 5 a day. And then there’s the ongoing “drip” messages at 4, 6, 8, 12 days. It is getting out of control. It’s spam. It’s annoying. And most of it’s breaking the law. But, I can also use it as blog (and twitter...
A few months ago a colleague sent me, and every other person on his overly large LinkedIn list, an email looking for some help hiring. It starts off with “Greetings LinkedI Connections” and ends with… an unsubscribe link. P.S. If you don’t want to hear from me, here’s an unsubscribe link – that’s the easiest way. My LinkedIn network has gotten so...
This morning I got spam from a major data broker / ESP / credit reporting agency claiming I’d signed up on some college website. In the UK. To check my credit score. Uh. No. No I didn’t. Of course, it’s very possible someone did use my email address when signing up for something at a UK university. They probably got a t-shirt or free pizza out of it. But that doesn’t...
This showed up in my mailbox earlier today: The tweet in question From Crunchbase: “Pluck is an email prospecting tool that gives you the email addresses of the people tweeting about subjects related to your business.” Prospecting: another name for spamming. Look, I know that you want to sell you’re newest, greatest product to the world. But just because I tweet something with a...
When you click on a link in your mail, where does it go? Are you sure? HTTP Redirects In most bulk mail sent the links in the mail aren’t the same as the page the recipients browser ends up at when they click on it. Instead, the link in the mail goes to a “click tracker” run by the ESP that records that that recipient clicked on this link in this email, then redirects the...
I just received a slightly confusing email. The From address and the Subject line are from Sony, but the content looks like it’s from email analytics firm Litmus. What’s going on here? Opening the mail it looks like a fairly generic “Oops, we lost a class-action lawsuit, have $2 worth of worthless internet points!” email from Sony; no mention of Litmus at all...
Saturday morning I check my mail and notice multiple emails from the DMA. Yes, I got three copies of an email from the US Direct Marketing Association with the subject line Kick It Up A Notch With The DMA Career Center. It seems the DMA are buying addresses from various companies. Because I use tagged email addresses, this means their naive de-duping doesn’t realize that laura-x and laura-y...
Got this to one of my accounts recently. Congratulations and welcome to emailinform. Dear Christine Welcome to emailinform – the program that brings you some of the best offers, discounts and competitions around. All offers have been chosen specifically for you and give you something useful, entertaining or just downright cheaper than usual. When registering with our partner Intermedia you...
One of the things we all “know” is that if spammers get their hands on spamtrap addresses then they’ll stop sending mail to those addresses. This is true for a lot of spammers, but sadly it’s not true for all. I don’t think it’s any secret that I consult for all types of mailers, from those who just need a little tune up to those who want me to help them avoid...
This is an actual opt-out link that came in a recent email. Sadly, this is a real company, listed on the NYSE sent by a major ESP.
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