Slashdot Mirror
DoubleClick Gets Into Spam
keytoe writes: "Well, just when we thought everyone's favorite Privacy Snoop was starting to mellow out a bit, we discover this little tidbit. DoubleClick
is now branching out from the ad serving business into the SPAM business due to the fact that direct email marketing 'is one of the few forms of Internet advertising that is thriving.' Using DARTmail, you can now target your bulk mailings 'based on profile data.' I wonder which profiling data they're talking about. Perhaps, say, all
the data they've been collecting for years?"
Will people ever learn you can't do stuff like this and not get nailed for it. All spammer should just go and get real jobs!!!
Dr. Suess: 'Gandalf, Gandalf! Take the ring! I am too small to carry this thing!' 'I can not, will not hold the One.
You all are just paranoid because now your work desktops are going to be smattered with ads for rogaine and anime porn.
Remember: complain about spam all you like, but the problem is that the spam is effective. Click banner ads etc. if you really hate spam, so that advertisers have a worthwhile alternative. Either that or kill the people who buy products from vendors who spam. The internet is too good of an opportunity to pass up; people will always want to make money off of it.
visit the hwky website for a lyrical genius infusion.
From Doubleclick's Website, the number to call for information about DARTMail is 866-459-7606 (toll free). Feel free to give them a call and give them a piece of your mind. Remember to be polite, you'll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. If enough people call to complain and ask to be kept off all of their lists, the following will happen. 1: They'll rethink their position, 2: they'll be forced to remove you, and 3: their phone lines will be clogged and they won't be able to make any sales.
A good /.ing should show them how we feel about this, but for god sakes, remember to disable your cookies before you go there...
Well, I'm happy to have filtered out everything doubleclick related with the help of junkbuster for the last few years.
direct email marketing "is one of the few forms of Internet advertising that is thriving". You mean people actually buy some of that crap?
You mean, people actually respond to spam? Who??
First line of their privacy policy:
No personal information is used by DoubleClick to deliver Internet ads.
So either their software doesn't include doubleclick customers, or the Privacy policy is wrong.
Course, if they've got any lawyers, both are probably right.
... anyone see any mail from it yet? I want to know what new host to add to pipe directly to /dev/null.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
what the heck
127.0.0.1 doubleclick.net
Think we have enough figgin spam stories for one day?
but hasn't this always been one of the biggest complaints about SPAM is that it is things you are uninterested in? I might not just blindly hit 'd' on everything that looks like spam if its actually things I'm semi-interested in...
I for one am looking forward to the "Nu-Spam". Since I have a B.S. already, I'll get ads from only the finest in unaccredited masters degree programs. Also, just think of the targeted pr0n. No more brunettes thanks, only the red-headed barely-legal college girls will send me invitations to meet them and their roommates on-line...
Just wait till some crappy band steals your nic.
I mean, what do you think they are collecting people's surfing habits information for, if not for spamming/selling later?
It's not like DoubleClick is monitoring how many times per day people go to Monster or HotJobs job board, and how many resumes they have sent, to determine how desparate they are to find a job, and then alert the President to send them a bigger check in the mean time so that they can survive^H^H^H spend and contribute to the growth of the economy?
After all, HP has no compunction about spamming their own employees to vote for the Compaq acquisition!
H-P Says Deluge Of Mail Designed To Gain Merger Support has all the gory details.
Geesh, Carly must be getting desperate (or has run out of HRT pills)!
what if we all made a script that replied to any email from these spammers and replied with 'subscribe' but instead of using our addr. change the reply to addr. to whoever they are? maybe that would kill their servers?:) Wishful thinking
Well, at least now if I recieve 50 porn emails, those emails will be specifically targeted to my porn needs, ensuring that I'll be able to find the porn I want faster and with greater reliability. When a company that destroys your privacy has your best interests in mind it really warms your heart.
...the only solution is to kill the spammers. DoubleClick has stated an intent to send unsolicited bulk e-mail, thus it should be considered justifiable to destroy their corporate HQ and kill the CEO as a preemptive strike.
Barring that, who hosts DoubleClick? Don't they have an anti-spam policy? If not (or if so and they choose to ignore it for DC), wouldn't it be prudent to configure your routers to drop all packets from their owned IP blocks?
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
"E-mail advertising, which is relatively inexpensive, is one of the few forms of Internet advertising that is thriving..."
According to whom?
Every single person I know complains about spam. Every single one of them deletes without reading the crap. Almost every one of them uses some sort of filtering/blocking.
And no, these aren't all geek-centric folks. Hotmail, yahoo, etc., all have basic filtering in place. Some UCE gets through, but most get filtered to their spam box.
Where the hell are these numbers coming from?
I realize that 1% of 10000 emails sent out is an acceptable return rate, but I wouldn't call it thriving. Show some solid proof that this is true and I will believe you.
Are people out there really this gullible? For pete sake, if I purchased all the products or services offered in spam, I'd be one highly educated, rich, successful, hung to my knee, always hard, in great shape, sexual tyrannosaurus.
And we know that ain't gonna happen.
Sent from your iPad.
The one good thing about this (potentially) is that your SPAM is at least more targeted... But then again, some how I think I will still be getting all those herbal viagra e-mails.
Blech!
To map ad.doubleclick.net to 127.0.0.1
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
127.0.0.1 localhost.nmsu.edu localhost doubleclick.net
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
Maybe that's no better and I could be wrong but there's nothing in the article to suggest that they are selling actual personal data of any kind as part of this deal.
Just the statement alone that they think email advertising is thriving shows how in the dark DoubleClick is on spam.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Wow, 22 comments and no one read the article. It talks about how it's designed to help segment your customers -- while this probably has evil applications, the releases DC is sending out seem to be targeted to, say, Amazon-type companies that want to send emails to their own customer base.
-- q
1) How long before they try to become a "one-stop-shop" again, by matching physical to e-mail addresses?
2) At least they're not selling their mailing list (yet).
3) Which ISP(s) do they have agreements with, and isn't this a violation of the terms of service? I would think that a spam clearing house would be something that even the big backbones want to keep off the 'net. Bets on how long they're around, or how long before their net connection is cut?
4) Most spam is now pr0n and Mafia-backed schemes. That's where the only real money is made. How long before an FBI investigation uncovers organized crime connections here?
Since Doubleclick is now turned 'spammer' Does this mean that their entire subnet will be blacklisted from the net? :) I suppose, when I start getting spam from them, I can just e-mail their upstream provider (probably UU.NET) and have them pull the plug. No more spyware banners, no more junkmail, and all is well in the world! :)
Personally, I think this is an excellent move! WTG DoubleClick, spam yourselves into oblivion, please!
The (Hopefully) Great Slashdot Blackout
after visiting ... delete the cookie. that'll fill their database up quite fast if people keep going back for more cookies and then delete them.
Does this mean I'll get a ton of ads for Visual Studio XP, since I keep seeing their banners on OSDN?
sulli
RTFJ.
I am an atheist but now I want to believe in a God for the sole purpose of praying to him/her to smite the executives of DoubleClick. Suggestions appreciated.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
...if they bought evil from Microsoft?
E-mail advertising, which is relatively inexpensive, is one of the few forms of Internet advertising that is thriving, and has become a key area of focus at DoubleClick.
I love the spin they put on this. They make spam out to sound like the latest & greatest form of advertising.
It's SPAM. Not advertising, SPAM. Just because it is "thriving" does not give them the right to spam us.
In addition to helping advertisers segment their customer data to launch more targeted ads, DartMail 3.5 also helps track customer transactions in more detail, recording such information as the value of a given purchase and whether it was made in direct response to an e-mail transaction.
Invasion of Privacy becomes "Track Customer Transactions in Detail". Amazing.
After all, that's JUST what we want...for people to be able to track us even more. When did invading our privacy become a good thing??
The internet is NOT Television, and these marketers need to stop trying to treat it like that. They can NOT force us to look at ads, no matter what they do. And dumping unsolicited emails on us isn't the solution.
Until these guys get it, I suggest 2 things:
1) Block doubleclick (wildcarded, of course) on your router/firewall.
2) Make use of SpamCop.net.
Doubleclick, to be in the business, will have to abide by the spam laws that states have already passed. This means Doubleclick will be one of the few groups I get spam from that actually add the ADV: prefix, which makes filtering them braindead easy.
It doesn't appear to be spam-tastic at all -- they talk through the whole thing about newsletters/customer bases/permission-based marketing.
You guys really want to go after a spam tool provider, go nuke Earth Online, or any of the guys who produce stealth emailers.
-- q
I don't see that you can say "Spam is effective" with a straight face.
Canter & Siegal, the original Usenet spammers, gave it up after a year or so. Sanford Wallace, one of the most unrepentant spammers, with a history going back to fax spamming in the late 80s, gave it up. AGIS networks, host to Sanford Wallace, went broke. You can't name a single major company that spams. The only people who spam are pyramid schemers, shady pseudo-pharmaceutical marketers, online pornoographers and internet casinos.
Spam isn't effective, at least not for someone on the right side of the law - it generates too much ill will. Spam me, for instance, and I'll complain all the way to the top, making clear that I won't buy your product or service again.
What spam does have going for it is lack of control by market forces. Conventional ads, tee vee, newspaper, billboard, etc, all get paid for by the advertiser up front, before the consumer makes a choice about buying the product. Those ads must be effective, and must not offend too many potential customers, or the advertiser won't recoup the ad costs, much less sell any product. The consumer who chooses to buy a conventionally advertised product does end up paying the cost of the ads, but only after seeing or hearing the ad.
This isn't true of spammed ads: everyone who recevies a spamvertisement pays some amount for it (dial-up time, CPU cycles, disk space allocation, etc), whether a spammed ad convinces them to buy the product, or revolts them so much they'll never buy from the spammer again.
The Invisible Hand of the marketplace only acts very lightly on spam - spamvertisements can be as lurid and grotesque as possible because of this. That's why we need laws against spamming - market forces don't apply.
Spamming is theft, plain and simple, and spammers must be punished.
So I wonder who'll get the results of modifying the all of the fields in doubleclick's cookies every so often.
I tank doubleclick and everything they do to 127.0.0.1 I suggest you all do the same.
Change your hosts file to block doubleclick and everything else:
Here's a good list.
Cheers!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
SPEWS meet Doubleclick.
HAND
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Does this really surprise anybody? Doubleclick has been a bunch of capricious, dishonest bastards for as long as I can remember. They were one of the first names associated with evil cookie tracking practices(tm) all the way back in 1995 (and even earlier?), IIRC.
direct email marketing "is one of the few forms of Internet advertising that is thriving"
As someone pointed out above, I wonder what they mean by "thriving." A 0.1% response rate is not particularly "thriving" -- I think it's more because there is no way to punish them for spamming.
Wasn't there some kind of paper published recently that showed that, in one of those game-theoretical situations with two equilibrium strategies (everyone cooperating, or everyone backstabbing each other -- I think it's called the "prisoner's dilemma"), people tended to pick a cooperative strategy if the group was allowed to punish backstabbers? Because IMO, the situation with spamming is very much like the prisoner's dilemma.
I did an experiment one time, I blocked doubleclick and a bunch of other ad sites at my firewall. The problem was, there were so many sites it was like trying to stop a firehose with a bathtub stopper. There have been efforts like the RBL, but they always seem to start charging money. IMHO, this is not just because they are "greedy," it's because their operational costs are too high. And why? Because there are too many spammers. I think the only way to really fight spam is with a distributed solution. Here we'd run into all the network poisoning problems people worried about with gnutella et al. in the early days. Is anyone working on anything like this? Is anyone even talking about it?
It seems like we're getting spammed with spam stories nowadays, not just from slashdot but on zdnet and others as well. Is spam getting worse, or is the spam lobby getting more aggressive, or what? :-)
Just my $0.01
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
So, does anyone have any idea what the ramifaction for thousands of web sites will be if doubleclick.net ever gets put on the RBL? I mean, banner ads may not be totally effective, but they're one of the few things keeping some of my favorite sites alive. I hope doubleclick's continued downward spiral isn't going to hurt the sites that rely on them.
My face isn't the one in question. I have no idea whether or not spam is TRULY effective, because I don't have any first-hand experience. However, it may interest you that in the text of the Slashdot post itself lies this:
DoubleClick is now branching out from the ad serving business into the SPAM business due to the fact that direct email marketing 'is one of the few forms of Internet advertising that is thriving.'
Clearly, regardless of your intuition or otherwise, Doubleclick thinks that spam is more profitable than banner ads. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to remember that while YOU personally may not respond well to spam (or anyone you know, for that matter) geeks generally do not. In fact, geeks tend to get really overexcited about the issue (for example, claiming that it is theft "plain and simple") but most people couldn't care less, and even seem to be buying spammed products. All of your postulations are all well and good, but the only reason to advertise is to sell more products, spam has been around for a while and its presence is only growing, therefore spam must be an effective way of selling products. That is what is plain and simple.
visit the hwky website for a lyrical genius infusion.
Well, according to much of the spam I receive now, I must have opted in some time in the past.
Problem is, I didn't.
The article and site talks about opt in lists, not SPAM and then give a opt-out link to verify the address as SUCKER.
Fight Spammers!
I dunno, but perhaps it is time to just start banning IP [subnets] completely. I'd hate to sound like some egalitarian asshole, but with the exception of a few friends, I wouldn't miss anything coming from the IP addies owned by ATT, and sure as hell not miss any of the excrement that is AOL.
Stuff like doubleclick I wouldn't miss either . . .
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
That Does it, I'm becoming a full-time troll. Do we have a union ?
I alternate between posting +5 and -1 Comments. Karma: +53 -47 = 6
I'm a little biased because I work for a company that sends promotional email blasts.
That having been said, there is a huge difference between spam and the mail this service is sending.
Like it or not, at one time or another you didn't read a privacy notice and your email address was sold to another company.
When we send out 5 million+ mailings, about 2000 TOS (terms of service) or Spamcop violations will come back. What most of these morons don't realize is, there's both a link and an email address they can send mail to to unsubscribe permanently and effectively from our lists.
This won't get you off other peoples' lists, but it will get you off ours. Currently, about a 1/4 of our customers actually have a timestamp and IP address telling us exactly when and where these addresses came from. I would expect in the near future that everybody will start doing this.
Now, this isn't so say that all people are nice. That's not to say that people don't troll web pages and people don't fake mail-from headers. It happens. But there's also a lot of promotional mail that YOU OPTED INTO whether you realize it or not.
What I'm saying is, before labeling every piece of mail that you get as spam, try unsubscribing. And yes, I know that some unsubscribe links are fake. What are you going to do? There are also fake breasts and fake watches. Will you spend the rest of your life wandering around as a confused virgin? (well.. maybe the wrong place to ask this)
So, in conclusion, I know how fashionable it is to love linux and hate companies that are "out to get us" like Microsoft and DoubleClick, but this article is inflammatory and causing a lot of stupid people to post a lot of stupid comments.
If you want to get out some angst, try:
http://www.postmastergeneral.com/
http://www.e-centives.com/corp/
http://www.messagemedia
Or, combining microsoft AND email:
http://www.bcentral.com/
And lots of other companies (like mine) that send lots of LEGAL, NON-SPAM, promotional email.
About a year and a half ago, DoubleClick announced that they had acquired NetCreations, a mailing list company run by an old friend of mine Rosalind Resnick, for a rediculously large number of millions of dollars. NetCreations had been in the business of running opt-in mailing lists. This didn't seem to attract a lot of interest at the time.
The deal fell apart after DoubleClick's stock price tanked, and NetCreations sold themselves instead to Seat Pagine Gaille.
So, they've tried this before, and it failed to gel. Let's hope that it fails again. The threat of targeted spam is far greater, I believe, than mass-mailed spam, because it's much more difficult to filter out.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've been blocking all mail from them for going on 2 years now. I also quarentine all mail with "doubleclick.net" in the body. Works like a champ.
damn you.
you got me...
bastard.
good job.
Someone should create software to automatically update the HOSTS file of the millions of PCs owned by users who hate this but do not know how to make it stop.
This would undoubtedly cause Big Brother to take notice. I'm sure that they would gladly pay you off for a few hundred thousand.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Clearly, regardless of your intuition or otherwise, Doubleclick thinks that spam is more profitable than banner ads. ... but the only reason to advertise is to sell more products, spam has been around for a while and its presence is only growing, therefore spam must be an effective way of selling products. That is what is plain and simple.
Oh, please; Are you seriously asking me to believe that any business, especially "natural viagra" spammers, pyramid schemers and an ad company like DoubleClick actually use some kind of analysis to decide what to do? You might as well ask me to believe that Pro Wrestling isn't rigged. It's pretty clear that DoubleClick's backed into a corner by the low rates that people will pay for crappy banner ads. DoubleClick is grasping at straws in the only business they know: lying to people.
Besides the issue of businesses making decisions on minimal data, you should read what I wrote: spam may be around, but whether the amount of spam is growing or shrinking has little to do with selling products. Your intuition that a relationship exists between spam quantity and selling products is demonstrably weak. Read the article to which you respond.
You can't name a single major company that spams.
The Democratic National Committee? They rake in enough soft $$$ to be called a "Major Company". See this guy's rant.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
There's nothing that I hate more (about e-mail, at least) than receiving 10-20 spam messages from Asia per day. But, I still believe that targeted advertising is a good idea. I'd much rather receive advertisements about Linux software, the latest PDA models, discounts on trips to Walt Disney World, B.B. King's new CD, and the latest martial arts tournament than I would random ads that come across my TV, inbox, or browser. Why do I see commercials for feminine hygeine products when I'm watching football? I certainly am not going to run out and buy any!
Targeted advertising is a great idea. But, only if it's done appropriately. I don't want Visa informing companies of my spending habits. I don't want my bank notifying companies of where I use my debit card. But, I wouldn't mind signing up for a service and telling them which categories of products I'm interested in. The way I see it, if I'm going to be bombarded with advertisements, I'd rather them be something I'm interested in. That's why I don't mind Amazon.com's tracking system. On more than one occasion I've purchased the products they've recommended for me, because they were generally something I was interested in.
I am a bit familiar with DARTMail (actually used the product), and from what I know, it does not use the vast amount of information that DoubleClick has for it's targeting - instead you upload all of your site's registration data, and target based off of that. It allows you to put together different emails for different groups of people, assembling HTML emails like building blocks.
The real murky area (I felt) is that what they do with the information once they have it... Do they integrate it in with their master list, getting even more info? I was assured that would never happen - that all of the info uploaded would be segregated, but I never read (or had access to) any of the fine print.
Fuck you. Keep your damn emails to yourself. If you can tell that some people are bouncing your SPAM, take their names off your list.
To reiterate: Fuck you.
a little off topic, but still civil liberties... i just watched "Enemy of the State," and my god, it's suprising how 9/11 is reflected in that movie. they talk about passing bills for "national security" and basically every bit of the aftermath of 9/11. personally, i would rather have randome advertising companies have information about me (to a degree), than the government. with a business, they can just try to get me to buy stuff. with the government, they can arrest me, fine me, put me in jail. most of you probably have an illegal mp3 or two laying around, and you know it. imagine just having one, and being busted by cops for it. now, if they could only detect if there was a cs player cheating and arrest them...
Now DoubleClick and all related networks can end up on the various blackhole lists, so we can start seeing their advertisements and cookies disappear! Rock on!
GENUITY (NET-GNTY-199-92) GNTY-199-92
199.92.0.0 - 199.95.255.255
Double Click, Inc. (NETBLK-DOUBLECLICK3) DOUBLECLICK3
199.95.206.0 - 199.95.209.255
Cable & Wireless USA (NETBLK-CW-10BLK) CW-10BLK
208.128.0.0 - 208.175.255.255
Inflow (NETBLK-CW-208-169-16A) CW-208-169-16A
208.169.16.0 - 208.169.23.255
MessageMedia (NETBLK-NETBLK-INFLOW-MMEDIA) NETBLK-INFLOW-MMEDIA
208.169.22.0 - 208.169.23.255
they're like akamai.net in front of your URL
they backend your click and privacies unfurl
Boohoo! Spam isn't effective! Stop it!
How could you possibly say that a relationship between spam quantity and selling products is demonstrably weak, and then flout reason by not demonstrating?
Do you seriously expect me to believe that business DON'T use analysis to decide what to do? That all business decisions are random, especially at companies we don't like because they email us? That is bordering on troll material, friend.
Regardless of what DoubleClick's true motives are, regardless of how much you want to believe that spam sux0rs and so it doesn't sell products, people are doing it. People would stop doing it if it didn't work. Yes, really!. Spammers LIKE to make MONEY. They're not in it just to piss on your parade. When you can prove to me that spammers are malevolently and anarchistically spamming with stolen commodore 64s (remember, they have no money because spamming doesn't pay), you might have a shred of credibility. In the interim, you're just flamebait.
visit the hwky website for a lyrical genius infusion.
Smartin Designs.
;-)
The lameness filter won't let me paste the list in here and post but the hosts blocking list they have there is a good 400k long. I use it religiously.
Here's a hint for the less informed: In windows9x/me edit the file \windows\hosts to allow you to redirect sites like doubleclick so they won't receive their web bug, cookie and other ad-tracker data. The text to insert can be found at the above site. For win2k/NT it's in \winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts.
In linux, the hosts file is in \etc\hosts.
Go have fun
Not only are so,me unsubscribe links fake, but often when you send an unsubscribe email, they take it and realize there is a live person reading mail on the other end and start sending you more spam.
So even unsubscribing is dangerous.
By the way all the opt in email things i have ever seen only say "would you like to recieve our newsletter, or some mentions of special deals from us". They NEVER say "would you like to recieve mail from every one we decide to sell this address to.
There is a huge problem with this statement:
"But there's also a lot of promotional mail that YOU OPTED INTO whether you realize it or not."
So you think it is ok for people to give up their privacy rights because they didnt realize something? Most contracts are invalid if one of the parties did not intend to enter them, or did not know they were entering them.
And i know companies that would sell your email address make sure that the text where it says "we will sell your email" is in a place where no one will check.
Oh yes and then there are the ones that say "our privacy policy may change so chack periodicaly"
It would be good if their software could connect to a central opt-out server and check each e-mail address before sending out spam. If the address is found in the opt-out server, it's removed from the recipients list.
Also, they should have enforceable message tracing capabilities built-in (not allowing the fake return address spammers use today).
Note: This is not offtopic at all, it is just useless. I think slashdot needs to get more modifiers, ones like "Worthless geek humor" on top of the too general "funny." Also necessary is "Offtopic, but damn interesting" (for obvious reasons) and while we are at it, throw in a "Ontopic, but reading it really is a waste of time."
penis
[[Ay fukkand lyke ane furious Fornicatour]]
Yes, yes. Sure. "Spam works." There are also other industries that turn a considerable profit too. Psychic teleservices and technological snake oil are two recent examples. They are both high-profit, highly visible / advertised... and under Federal investigation.
To tie into the previous stories, how about creating a profile that includes the following people.
Are unemployed
Use the Internet
Claim to own their own business
Spent time in a dungeon in Europe for sending unsolicited e-mail
Discovered that technology has reduced the response rate to their mass mailings to near 0%
We take this profile and tell DoubleClick to mail every piece of spam to people who match all of these criteria. If all goes correctly, the number of addresses to be hit is one, and that lucky person is Bernard Shifman.
...I'll continue to have an inbox filled with pr0n spam. How is that news?
Hopefully, it will all come from the same domain or sender so it's easily filtered.
Spam is inevitable... I'd much rather receive well targeted spam than porn advs.
For your firewalls
1 .104/21. 225.0/240 4.253.104.0/23
199.95.210.0/24
-------------------
204.176.152.248/21
206.65.181.96/22
206.65.18
63.85.84.0/24
204.176.177.0/24
208.211
208.203.243.0/24
204.178.112.160/19
2
216.230.65.64/28
63.77.79.192/27
192.65.80.0/24
128.11.60.64/27
128.11.92.0/24
199.95.206.0/22
Actually, I know people who DO spam, and it is VERY effetive for them. Actually, market forces DO apply. To get the point at which you can safely spam without being shut down by a provider, you have to spend a LOT of money to get tier 1 or 2 bandwidth, and a safe server. Any mom & pop shop that tries to spam is shut down sooner rather than later. But if you have the money to buy the right bandwidth in the right location, you still can make quite a bit of money spamming.
I'm going to set BGP to forget that AS 6432 ever existed, and then perhaps route all of those IP blocks to Null0. Hrmm Another SPAM to the bit bucket.
Life is but a Beta test...
Thanks. I think I'll start with a J0nkatz story about his search for love - of a young goat. I'll call it "Lord of the zoo : Fellowship of the goat".
I alternate between posting +5 and -1 Comments. Karma: +53 -47 = 6
My server logs are full of relay attempts coming from cable modem and dsl users.
I think that they just start scanning for SMTP servers and then attempt relays. I see various attempts addressed to "test9483@hotmail.com" or such, probably from the open relay probe. Once they get a live one, the spam spews forth.
One could argue that anyone who operates an open relay should have their server overloaded, maybe then they would take care of their problem.
OTOH, it's entirely possible that it is you that they'd go after, rather than the legions of spammers.
Gordon.
He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
-- J.R.R. Tolkien
Did you drop out of a womb? Do you breath air? Did you have an email account accessible by the Internet? Sounds like you opted in to me. Spam!!!!!
I'm with you man.
If you don't click on banner adds then the terrorists have won and you deserve all the spam you get.
Friggin terrorists piss me off.
Dearest Timothy & Slashdot crew, Can we make an effort to get your terminology up to speed? I find it troubling that you guys tend to try and get us all worked up by using misleading phrases in the headlines. SPAM = unsolicited email The service these guys are offering is solicited when users download software, fill out magazine subscriptions, etc. I don't see where this is spam. Is all email businesses send to obtain clients considered spam by slashdot? I hope not. I would hope we were a bit more educated than that.
To my fellow readers, please don't fall for Timothy's silly attempt at enraging you. Go ahead and mod me down, but I just disagree with misleading posts. They do nobody any good and a company's image some harm, and for no good reason. Victor
Internet Explorer 6 will block cookies from referenced sites, such as DoubleClick. These guys had better act fast if they're after the profiles on that Windows user base, because what they've got is all they'll ever have...
Unsubscribe? give me a break PLEASE. Count yourself lucky that you dont get DOS'ed frequently, a spamcop warning is a nothing compared to a seriously pissed admin or hacker who wants a piece of your company's spamming ass. One of the nice things about running your own email server is the ability to blacklist any block of ip's that gets on my nerves. Is that what your company wants? For me to exile you off forever to /dev/null for one lousy piece of spam ? Kinda kills your chance to ever get me as a customer through legit marketing methods. But then, companies that use spam usually only sell ponzi schemes, penis enlargers, porn, and fake diet solutions. Oh well, no great loss then. In fact, can you tell me your ip block now, so i can pre-emptively blacklist you? :)
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
A few weeks ago, I got some spam that made it through my various lameness filters into the general inbox. This irks me enough usually to track down and destroy the sender's account.
To my suprise, it was relayed through a server in doubleclick's canadian office network.
Figuring that doubleclick being a company with a network to protect, would not have sent the spam deliberately, I contacted their admin and informed them of what initially appeared to be a potential open relay.
Some snotty marketroid wrote back and said that if I didn't want the email, I should follow the 'remove link' in the message footer. (Yeah, Like that ever works). I replied, patiently explaining reasons for not responding directly to spam, nor following links from it. (Heck, I don't even load images and other objects from HTML spam, partly for security reasons, but mainly to stop leaking 'tracking' information that confirms that a spam has arrived (not that many do, having been killed by the aforementioned lameness filters). The link was, as usual, utterly useless, as the sender's account had already been terminated by their ISP. (Dang! someone beat me to it)
This told me all I needed to know. Doubleclick support spam, period. Into the blackhole they go...
I hate spam, but I also hate pop-up windows (esp. with X10 advertisements) and intrusive flash ads.
But, at least for the pop-ups, they've been found to be more effective than banners, and the more obnoxious the better.
I hate them, and my big peeve with browsers these days is that I can't target certain domains for shutting off pop-ups (it's either on or off globally for most - IE, Moz, Opera).
But I'm sure most people tolerate them, and some must actually respond. The same is most likely true of spam.
Best,
Stuart
DoubleClick will also be providing their own SPAM blocking software which for $50/month will prevent their DART-mail customers from bugging you. This is expected to be the real profit-maker.
Spamazon is "a big company". I've gotten spam from Dell, MicroWarehouse, Spamazon, Excite, Microsoft, and RealNetworks.
The key is that they're all scum.
Spam is very *cost-effective* - but that's not very effective in absolute terms. As long as backbones are willing to look the other way as long as the bills are paid, spam will be a problem.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Profiling makes sense when there's a per-targeted-consumer cost to the advertiser, but the 'beauty' of spam is that there's effectively no cost to target more people. So why would I want to send an advertisement to a subset of the available email addresses?
There's a huge difference between "thriving" and "effective". All they're saying is that they stand a chance of making more money acting as a spam distributor than getting people to pay them for advertising on their banner system.
Given that the average spammer is, by definition, a class A moron, getting them to part with their cash for profiled address lists is probably like taking the proverbial candy from a snotty little infant.
That all business decisions are random
Uh, Actually, almost all marketing decisions are about random events and probability. (I think that is why marketers have to take math classes). You generally only analyze a small set of metrics before making a business decision...for example, you check population stats and traffic information, then decide to put a Seven Eleven on the corner hoping people will drop in at random times.
Doubleclick is circling the drain. This merely reinforces that observation.
Spammers live in vain.
Though I realize double click could care less if SPAM works or not, just as long as companies think it does and they pay double click.
So essentially double click will spam up, while advertising to companies that their SPAM works.
Personally I have NEVER received one single SPAM email that I had even a remote interest in.
For instance, you sign up for a mortgage with a company, and get SPAMed for some 'investment opportunity.' What does the one have to do with the other?
Not to mention phone spam, and fax spam. I get more phone spam than anything. They have ruined my phone totally. Ever day I gotta run downstairs to grab the phone and look that the number is 'out of area' before I Ignore it. They should pay for the energy I burn up and down the steps. My fax machine fires up, only to be some real estate spam. My postal mail box is always busting fresh with spam from the big chain super markets and credit card applications. My olfactory nerves are spammed as I drive by Steve's soulfoud, but that kinda works...As the final insult, my email is spammed.
Watch out, there will be spam on the one dollar bill next...
It is typical marketing speak. "Segment customers" means "combine email addresses with even more personal information".
And what do you think would happen after those customers are "egmented"? The spam will soon start flowing.
I am pretty sure that Doubleclick will help advertisers segment customers using their own (doubleclick's) data. I really doubt they are simply selling a software tool here. In fact i am sure advertisers will know better how to use their own data than double click does. And since when was doubleclick known for software development anyways? Nope they are selling data.
There is no such company as "Spamazon" or "Excite." Perhaps you mean "Amazon.com," America's favorite on-line merchant, or "Excite@Home," one of America's favorite broadband access providers.
If you would like more information about Amazon.com or Excite@Home, please send an electronic-mail to confirm your double-opt-in membership to the address on your screen.
Thank you, and God Bless America.
Here's how DartMail works:
Suppose I am a DartMail customer. I have a web site, and a form on that page that my visitors use to subscribe to my newsletter. I collect all kinds of info from this form, from their email address, to street, to zip code, to whatever I feel like, and whatever people feel like submitting.
Then when I use DartMail, I can use the filter function to send the newsletter to whatever segments of my list I feel like. If I want to only send to people whose zip code is between 70000 and 90000, or maybe to all my subscribers who have indicated that "yes, I like puppies" when they filled out the form, then I use their filtering tool to do that.
That's all it is. Their press release is worded very poorly, almost certainly designed to piss off the paranoid freedom slashdot crowd, but in the end it's nothing new, and nothing terrible.
this was modded down as redundant when the other post similar to mine was done at the same time.
thanks for being so observant pendejo
Who the heck buys anything off of spam.
You'd be surprised.
I recently spent several weeks doing my best to convince the people in my company's marketing department that they could not start sending unsolicited commercial email to potential customers.
My arguments were the familiar reasons why USCE is so evil. Their arguments amounted to "Everyone else is doing it, so why can't we?"
To this day, I have to tell my father-in-law about once a week that the "money-making business idea" he's found out about through a 'helpful email' is in actuality a get-rick-quick scheme, a pyramid scam or something similiar.
Scarily enough, Spam *does* work. The people in my marketing deparment all have degrees! True, that doesn't say anything about their intelligence, but they had enough common sense to pass enough tests, (or kiss enough ass) to get through college sucessfully. To the more stupid, or those unprepared to deal with blatant profiteerism-- quite a few Spams prey on the eldery, trying to get them to 'invest' their social security checks-- Spam is a deadly trap.
What's the saying? It was in an article on evolution a few weeks ago. Went something like:
"Natural selection favors those who are too stupid to use birth control."
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Well, a couple people have pointed out that DARTmail is NOT a spammer product. But those people are in the minority so I'm going to drive this home:
It's a premium email delivery engine. It is much too expensive for spammers. This is for publishers who maintain newsletters and house advertising lists. Hell, it's too expensive for a lot of publishers for that matter... Anywho, DoubleClick, like most email providers, is extremely uptight about their clients using opt-in only lists (albeit IIRC I think they still let you get away with pre-checked single opt-in). I know this personally from having them investigate mailings that had high rates of bounces and unsubscribes (it was a list import problem and the primary key wasn't properly parsed from the email address - I'm not a spammer!).
Plus, there is nothing new about this - if you read the article, you see that it says this is DARTmail 3.5. DoubleClick has been in the email tech biz for a couple years now. v1 was scratch built, v2 was when they bought Flo, v3 is integrating Message Media's technology.
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=lang_en&q =messagemedia&btnG=Google+Search&meta=group%3Dnews .admin.net-abuse.*
734 hits in N.A.N.A.*
Rule #0 Spam Is theft
Rule #1 Spammers lie
Rule #2 If a spammer appears to be telling the truth see rule #1
I want to see proof that I ever suscribed for ANY spam
Rick B.
This next to the poll about joining the Liberty Project which has AOL for one of the big members. Lets just track everybodies habits and mail them, that's it...
If not now, when?
Nope:-
Mozilla 0.9.8 does even better.
with mozilla u have the option of using session
cookies only.
so if u forget to block some servers, they can only
store cookies per session and not persistant cookies.
same with galeon.
Well, I agree with most everything you say, execpt
that major corps. don't spam.
In fact, I get spam regularly from the Pizza Hut
(Tricon) folks. Also, even ISPs send spam. There
is a wireless ISP in LA who has spamed us several times.
However, with the recent CA Appelate Court
affirming the CA anti-spam law, we may start
to get relief.
I wasn't saying others didn't do better, I was saying Microsoft got it right. By saying so, I implicitly thought it was clear that I mean that Microsoft used the right facit as blueprints?
Well, that's what I meant, anyway. There are even more restrictive settings in other products (and in IE6 too for that matter), but let's face it, most people (and this really is a most-people business) DO use Windows. And whatever ships with it.
Bernie Shifman? ;)
This is hardly new. DoubleClick has been involved
with spam for a long time. Do a google search in
news.admin.net-abuse.*
What does 'SPAM' stand for? Or did keytoe mean to type 'spam'? Or is he just shouting the word 'spam' in the middle of his comment?
What we need is a browser plugin that would look over my shoulder, watching for banner ads (or links that looked like banner ads). Then a companion daemon would tickle the ad to give it a warm fuzzy feeling that it was indeed loved by users the world over.
Banner ads' hit rates would become more attractive and I'd just be paying a small bandwidth tax. And if we could move that to a server someplace....
But I'd probably end up getting annoying cease and desist letters. Oh well.
Spam isn't effective,
Right -- Spam itself is an ineffective way to make money. However, the real business of Spam is not the unsolicited mail, but the pyramid schemes of appearing to be successful and then selling e-mail address lists, relay lists, and spam tools to other suckers who think that spamming is going to buy them a cadillac. ("After all, with all of this spam in my inbox, _someone_ must be getting rich.")
FWIK, scamming wannbe spammers can be very profitable, and therefore is effective.
Doubleclick is really just pulling off the exact same scam as Spamford, except on a grand scale -- They come in and say "We have all this great data and we know how to market your business via e-mail. Now pay us a large sum of money and we'll take care of it for you."
Economic forces aren't going to eliminate spam unless you can somehow use them to prevent a sucker from being borne every minute, never mind the delivery costs.
If you don't mind, I'd like to condense most of what you said here and use it in my stock spam-reporting boilerplate. Well-said, and righteous.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
If you read these articles you always come upon the same thing: they say, it costs next to nothing to send 50,000 e-mails, if I get a 10-20 hits that's a good return. Spam doesn't work in the conventional sense - no legitimate organization would engage in any kind of advertising that pissed off and alienated so many potential customers. No matter how stupid it is if you e-mail the whole country you're going to get 5 or 10 thousand people deciding to check it out for one stupid reason or another.
Porn addicts will click on the porn site e-mail, because they have no self-control and out of the illusion that because it came to them and it's "random" they aren't really making the choice ONCE AGAIN to blow a wad of cash on masturbation.
Gambling addicts, same exact thing.
Idiots apparently are falling for the get rich quick schemes (and let's face it - a lot of idiots are trying to get rich quick by RUNNING get rich quick schemes).
Look at this Sabrina person they quote in the article. It's clear she doesn't have the slightest shred of repentance for behaving in this reprehensible manner. She's completely clear: as long as she makes a few bucks she has absolutely no concern for the harm her clogging of bandwidth might cause, the time she is wasting, whether she offends people who flatly do not want that kind of material in their inboxes.
The problem is basically noone thinks it's their problem. Look at all the people here saying "oh there's nothing you can do about spammers" or "just use solution X to filter it out." Try to imagine if some phone sex outfit started autodialing the whole country and playing a prerecorded "free sample" There would be massive outrage, a full-scale investigation, you can bet your ass John Ashcroft would be on teevee promising to track these miscreants down. Ah well maybe when that reorganized ICANN takes all this shit over it'll get sorted out.
if a website (say xyz.com) requires an email address for me to register, i usually put in sales@xyz.com. Spam me all you like. if enough people put that in hopefully that will clog their email servers. some websites seem to have caught on (as i'm sure i'm not the first to think of this) and check for the host part of the email entry and complain if it matches their own. at that point, i usually put in another spammers email (sales@anotherSpammer.com). let them duke it out.
I've instructed Mozilla to warn me before accepting any cookies, and anytime a banner ad tries to set a cookie on my system, it gets denied and that banner ad site gets added to my filters.
I don't quite understand why Mozilla doesn't honor the "only from originating site" flag, but in a way I appreciate it - a banner ad that tries to set a cookie is like a houseguest who smokes...
www.eFax.com are spammers
Hades - February 25, 2002 (AP) - Dante Alighieri returned from the dead today to appear at a press conference announcing a new Circle of Hell component to accommodate Internet Spam providers. The new Circle, 8.5, will house spammers and marketers who have been deluging internet users with allegedly helpful emails, up to hundreds per day. "We thought long and hard about simply tossing them into Bolgia 9 or Bolgia 10," Alighieri said, "they are certainly Sowers of Discord and Inpersonators, but they also have elements of Alchemists - trying to turn base electrons into gold. For these reasons, it was simpler to give them their own new Circle - 8.5, than to try and winnow out the separate elements." Alighieri's assistants at eDante Enterprises reiterated the choice - saying "We were going to implement a system of distribution into the existing Circles, based on the contents of the message headers, but we feel they deserve their own place - right near the edge of the pit. Plus, have you seen some of these headers?" The existing denizens of adjoining Bolgias have 90 days to file protests, which eDante representatives say are already coming in fast and furious. "The most common complaint has been 'eeeeew - spammers?!' and that's mostly from the Evil Counselors in Circle 8 and Traitors in Circle 9." Doubleclick, and Cantor and Siegel were unavailable for comment.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Sure, Spam is cheap. But ask yourself: of all the spam you get, how much do you respond to?
Tried going to the link but no avail. Then I realized my .hosts file! Doubleclick is set to 127.0.0.1 :)
Can anyone mail the actual text?
SmartIn Designs has an excellent list as well, one of the best host-blockers I have come across for this and I did used to maintain my own. DoubleClick, be gone.
Several formats and levels of protections are available, so check it out even for the docs. You'll probably want to trim it down a bit... the largest list is pretty damn large.
Anyone know of any other ones out there? I think using a CVS-like system to maintain a decentralised host blocking list could be a good idea... anyone trying this already?
<!-- DHTML / JavaScript menu, popup tooltip, Ajax scripts -->
They say nothing about the products that are being advertised, just the form of advertising. This means that the "Every one else is spamming, so why cant we" mentality is working, and Doubleclick wants to get rich quick ... with the $$$ of those dumb enough to pay Doubleclick to send spam for them.
Are you paranoid if you know that they just want to know everything you say and do?
But, this sucks because if my name is on 300 lists than I have to opt-out of each one individually. Why should I have to go through all this hassle to prevent someome from sending me something that I never asked for to begin with!?!?
We should right to our leaders and representatives to ask them to pass laws against this kind of thing. Double Click should work on the "Opt In" principle instead. Don't send a goddam thing unless I specifically request it!
They're marketers. You should be surprised that they manage to avoid choking to death on their own snot.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I set up a Hotmail account just for spam. Every time I go to a site that requires an email for something I just use the Hotmail address. The best part is that Microsoft has to store all that spam on their server.
You do NOT "opt in" to getting continuing mail when you make a purchase.
In meatspace, this is why I usually pay cash and never return warranty cards.
But on the net (and on the phone) your only option is paying by credit cards, and I've so fscking tired of getting spam for YEARS because I once purchased a christmas gift that I'm actually cutting back on my online purchases because of it.
If I make a purchase, you can get away with ONE follow-up catalog. But that's it - I don't want to be on your mailing lists, I don't want to be shared with your affiliates. You can get away with an opt-out box, but only if it's well-placed and visible - no 4-pt fonts buried on a page two links away from where I provide my information.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I get periodic email with special offers, information, even (GASP!) updates to privacy policies from a number of major online retailers. They are few and far between (1 or 2 per business per week). They only come from the ones with which I do business. They always come from the same email address. This is not spam. Hell, most of these companies will gladly provide you with information on how to remove yourself.
Spam is an offer for a penis-enlargement pill from a randomly-generated Yahoo account. Spam is (as best I can tell) a Japanese porn site sample. Spam is a make-money-fast offer. Spam pulls tricks to hide the sender. Spam will send the same message to the same nonexistant address 50 times.
Pick your battles. If you fight them all, you will not win (unles you're one of those blackholes-will-save-us-all-from-evil types, in which case have fun on your small isolated island of the internet).
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
It is obviously effective if you judge effectiveness purely by the amnount of it.
It isn't really effective in being productive though.
I guess it is better than nothing, for almost the same cost. That is the problem
What kind of "alternative" is clicking on a banner adv.?
What do you get? A doubleclick.net cookie naturally!
Which is a good alternative to drowning? (1) falling from a height of 100 stories (2) freezing to death. If you answered (3) same difference, you go to the head of the class.
Duh.
What you're getting may not be spam. Other people I know get spammed by some of the big retailers. I probably got about twenty spams from MicroWarehouse before we threw them in the filters.
All the stuff you're talking about adds to the annoyance, but it's not *necessary* for spam. For it to be spam, it has to be unsolicited, bulk, and email. That's it. If I didn't ask for it, and lots of people are getting it, it's spam.
Sure, Amazon is glad to tell you how to remove yourself; at one point, it was to send mail to "no-special-offers-ever-3@amazon.com". But they don't always honor removes.
They're in our spam filters because (and yes, I called and verified this with them) they have said they will *NEVER* ask for permission before sending their promotional mailings. You know that little "Send me special offers" checkbox most places have? They've said they won't have one, and that they'll spam until told to stop.
There are lots of companies that ask first. I do business with them, and I lose only a few sites that, frankly, weren't doing anything for me to begin with.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Fuck that.
You don't reply to spam with remove me, my brothr did that once and I get dozens of spam each week now.
Market forces apply to spam if people filter out spam before they read it. I frequently get spam which is offensive to me.
I have my mail program set to delete typical spam, I have a cable modem and my cpu is fast enough to not make this noticable.
Laws aren't needed, you just need a program that accesses a list of spammers to eliminate spam from your internet. look for spam host files.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
Places like PM0.net and doubleclick are no longer allowed to send e-mail to the servers I administrate. Basically, they were sending to thousands of dead and long gone addresses and made up of the majority of the incoming mail on the system. So, if they want to run a shoddy spam haus under the cover of a "direct marketer" they can send $4,000 a month to my company to be allowed back in. That should cover the cost of their uncheap and pain in my butt marketing.
Yet here I am with "World's Largest Casino" and "X10" ads (man, I hope those jerks go out of business). Do they actually DO anything with that "Big Brother" data? On my linux box, I use Mozilla .98 and block the SOBs anyway, but IE version whatever happily accepts every cookie thrown at it. I'd think they could do better with the data they collect.
Am I wrong here?
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
Everyone,
/. editors would not read through the page to realize that this is not spam.
If you actually go to the page and look, you will see that this is OPT IN. It's not spam like the submitter said. Everyone is going off the hook without looking at the page and seeing how it works. It works just like Post Master Direct.
Webmasters can sign up, people join different lists (OPT-IN) and then they get emails from advertisers, and the webmaster makes some money. The people opt into getting mail about things they are interested in, and can opt out at any time.
This is NOT spam. Spam is when you do not authorize the person to send you mail.
From their Web page:
"DARTmail provides technologies such as List Generator and Preference Center that allow your subscribers to opt-in and manage their subscription through branded, seamless Web forms integrated with your Web site."
Get your facts straight before posting some crap that is not true. It's sad that the
Back in the summer of 2000 I was working for a company in Soho called Netcreations -- you may have heard of them before (Opt-In email company that some people accuse of spam even though they are against spaming). Anyway, it was about the time of the big dot-communist bust, so the co. wasn't doing so well. Guess who comes along to buy us out? Yup -- Doubleclick.
Anyway, the main deal is that Netcreations had the biggest email list of all the direct mail players at the time, and DC was trying to start their own direct mailing program without much luck. They wanted to buy us in a typical Microsoft fashion (We suck at this area of business, so we'll just buy a company that's good at it because although we are incompetent we have an ass load of cash).
Well, at first NC thought it may be a good idea. DC was making all kinds of promises that they would never abuse the database of emails or connect it to all the personal information they had been collecting by tracking users over these years. They said they would respect Netcreations Double Opt-In only policy (In other words -- you *HAVE* to sign up for email from NetCreations servers, and after you do, you need to verify again that you really really want unsolicited email). Profits were down, so NC said what the hell, and started to sign on-bored.
Here is the funny part. At that exact time me, and like 50% of the tech department there quit. Being the smart little rodents we were, we knew that Doubleclick's word wasn't worth shit, and besides that, really didn't want to be Doubleclick employees. I mean, if you work for DC, how can you godamn sleep at night?? I even went to the "Welcome Aboard" party that DC had for us after I put in my 2 weeks, just so I could drink all their free beer and steal some shit out of their office (Common! You'd do it to if given the opportunity!).
So a month or so past, and I'm still in contact with all my buddys back at NC (Me and the CTO got along great). Turns out, NC decided after all to back out of the deal because, surprise surprise, the signals were there that DC wouldn't keep it's word, and was really planning on abusing the NC email database and connecting it all that cool ass DART shit. NC, not being scum bags, decided that was bullshit and dropped out of the deal.
So yah.. I saw this coming. And ya know what? At least I stole some shit from these guys.
"The Wright brothers were the first to fly with a heavier-than-air machine, but boy did they have a lousy plane"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You're right about not convincing the bad ones, maybe, but just once I'd like to have a chain of evidence stretch taut, seize, and throttle a spammer, who will then hang for all to see over a pit fuming with fire and brimstone.
:)
The apathy you describe, Yes, is the usual reaction, but having boilerplate (which I meant in the second sense you name) to fire off saves me a lot of angry typing
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
If you're on a Mac, I recommend OmniWeb, which has excellent cookie-dropping and URL filtering features. My default cookie action is "accept, drop at end of session", and I can set the sites whose cookies I want to keep. (connect.apple.com, slashdot.org, and about half a dozen others.)
\ .doubleclick\.net/
In OW, you can write up a list of regex's to filter. I haven't seen anything from
/ads\..*\.net/
/ads\..*\.com/
/*banner*/
/.*
for quite a while now.
It's pretty sweet..
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Its alive !! The ROBO TROLL is alive !!! All gather and fear me!!
Amazon got into my MTA reject file because some idiot signed be up to get notified on anything to do with "Buffy, the vampire bitch". No amount of emails or phone calls to support would stop it. Screw them. I still get connection attempts from them. Apparently their lame-ass spaminator software doesn't remove bad email addresses after getting "550" error codes.
What I can't stand is when my own ISP sends me e-mail asking if I would like to sign up with them. . . . -_-
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Yes, here it's for cocaine users. ;)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Just wondering.
People in Soviet Russia, however, appear to be afflicted with amusing juxtapositions of the aforementioned situation
I definantely have to agree there. That said, market forces CAN force a legitimate company that
has crossed the line into spamming to change.
Start sending mail to DoubleClick advertisers, let them know that so long as they advertise using DoubleClick, and DoubleClick advertises
using spam, you won't buy they products. Enough people do that, and doubleclick will find it very expensive to spam, as all their more legitimate customers start walking away.
The solution to the spamming problem isn't yet more clueless government intervention but the use of mechanisms to allow free market forces to work. Legal solutions always have unintended, negative consequences. Technological solutions are needed for what is at heart a technical problem.
The best approaches currently being developed involve the use of micropayment systems for the equivalent of email postage. If it costs spammers a cent, or even a tenth of a cent, per email, their return on investment drops dramatically. The major hurdle that must be cleared by these systems is that mail user agents and/or mail transfer agents must be configured to support them.
See Other Online Payment Initiatives for pointers to additional information.
sure try my one, updated daily/weekly and makes just about every other hosts file redundant, blocks spyware too
linux,bsd,mac,pc
12,000 blocked hosts and counting
you might want to trim it , but i run it as it is and have no real problems.
AT&T spams.
JCrew.com spams.
JCPenney spams.
And that's just the ones that crap in my mailbox.
Yes, major companies do spam.
No, it's still not effective.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
>You can't name a single major company that spams
Amazon. Yahoo. Pizza Hut. Odds are it's affiliates that produce the email but the companies selling the final product are just as responsible.
>The Invisible Hand of the marketplace only acts very lightly on spam
You could have avoided some confusion if you just said spam is not a legitimate business practice. That is your opinion and not very well defined. Random unbaised spam may be illegal. Targeted spam where people opt-in is a legitimate practice that happens to produce good results. (BTW, smiths' invisible hand argument is kind of out dated and a flawed)
Here is some proof that direct email marketing is an effective method to advertise on the net. These numbers were generated from some of the most popular publicly traded companies on the net. I work for an affiliate marketing company so here's some insight into the market research that I do every day. I used a random sample of transactions that have been generated over the past several weeks...
30 million different banners, sizes, text links
5 billion impressions
$0.0007 generated per impression on a banner ad
$0.15 per click on a banner ad
$0.0020 per impression on an email
$0.50 per click on an email
A few years ago these numbers would have been much lower. The difference between a few years ago and today is that people are targeting their emails rather than sending them out at random. Opt-in programs are becoming more and more popular. Free services now require valid email addresses.
I hate to be the voice for the 'evil' companies but it is true that spam has a future. Spam will be around so long as it remains an effective on-line advertising tool. You are correct to some extent that spam should be illegal and your prayers have already been answered in some form. Take the time to go over the many anti-spam laws that vary from state to state and you will find out just how illegal spam may be. Of course I would hope that technology solves this problem before laws are needed.