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?"

Comments

Call them and let them know how you feel.

[kolding]

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.

Re:Call them and let them know how you feel.

[gorilla]

If you're not giving them business, then you're costing them money. If this program costs them more money than it makes them, then they will cancel it.

BTW, in the US, if you call from a pay phone, it will cost an additional 35 cents.

Re:Call them and let them know how you feel.

[hymie3]

It's not spam; it's opt-in targetted email list product. Companies pay $100K+ for this hosted solution. The company gives DC a honkin' huge email list; DC sends out Acme branded email and handles things like bounces and unsubscriptions.

Re:Call them and let them know how you feel.

[zama]

You're missing the point - the company's list has to be opt-in. And DARTmail is way to expensive to be used as a spamming tool. Also, the list isn't given to DoubleClick per se - it still belongs to the client and DoubleClick can't touch it or use it. Lastly, DoubleClick doesn't send out the mailings either - they provide the asp technology. The client still manages the list and sends the mailings.

Re:Call them and let them know how you feel.

[zama]

Actually if you want to wave credentials you'll lose - as an ex-employee of DCLK, an ex-client, and currently a list admin using a different provider.

So let's go:

1. How does DoubleClick verify that the lists in use are opt-in?
When you are negotiating for the process, at least one sales person and probably a pre-sales consultant goes to your site and goes through the registration process multiple times. Some of the addresses they then ask to unsubscribe - if you spam them anyway there's a problem. They also go through your privacy policy to ensure compliance.

Also, if you send out a mailing that comes back with large numbers of unsubscribes and bounces, that raises a big red flag. Lastly, there actually are people monitoring the abuse@doubleclick.net address. If a particular client crops up enough, it will be addressed.

2. What are the penalties if the list isn't opt-in?
If it's proven that your list is not opt-in then your contract is abruptly cancelled. And depending on how bad a PR flap you can be sued.

3. DoubleClick has no responsibility for spam like an ISP.
DoubleClick's number one responsibility is to its shareholders. Bad PR has significantly hurt their business.

4. Bulk email is the stated point of the DARTmail service.
Nyet. You are misunderstanding "bulk" means large numbers. If you send out 1.8MM newsletters like I do, Outlook or some small scale provider isn't going to cut it. That's bulk. The stated purpose of DARTmail is bulk OPT-IN email.

5. Cost issues.
We left DARTmail because it was too expensive. Period. Most SPAM is only cost-effective with a cheap CPM. That's not a 100% guarantee but a general truism.

I have no doubt that there will be abuses of the technology. DoubleClick's client base is large and there are certainly issues in monitoring compliance for that many clients. But there's a huge difference between a legitimate product that will be fractionally abused and actual spamware.

Junkbuster

[joib]

Well, I'm happy to have filtered out everything doubleclick related with the help of junkbuster for the last few years.

Re:Junkbuster

[jsprat]

Another way is to download this hosts file. About a 50K download = 10,080 unique servers blocked, 171 doubleclick servers. Last updated end of November, last year.

Re:Junkbuster

[O2n]

The Ad-Zapper for squid works also fine, and if you're what the slashdot users usually pretend to be, you should run squid, not junkbuster. ;)

Also, for spam in general, or rather against it, SpamMotel and especially SneakEmail work like a charm; SneakEmail even lets you reply to (suspected) spammers without revealing your real address.

Of course, if you have your own domain/MX and mail server, you can generate these "one-time" email addresses yourself - but using sneakemail is just too easy and convenient.

Re:Let's get 'em

[Dimensio]

Won't work for me. I route doubleclick.com and every domain associated therein to 127.0.0.1 (and I run a private webserver) on my box.

Re:This Dartmail system...

[Dimensio]

Don't pipe to /dev/null
I'm wondering if there's a method of rerouting incoming connections to port 25. Say if someone from a specific host tries to connect to port 25, your server acts as a transparent redirect, reconnecting them to their own mailserver so that they end up overloading themsleves.

I'm probably not thinking that through all the way, but one of the best methods, IMO, of countering spam is with methods that cause the spammer's mailservers to crash in mid-run.

Re:according to WHOM?

[hymie3]

This is not "spam", per-se. This product is primarily a hosted solution. Think $100K+. This is for big companies who don't really feel like managing their own lists. When you put down your email address on a catalog or credit card form, the email you start receiving (technically opt-in) will probably be sent using this product.

Doubleclick's press release

[quistas]

Is here.

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

Re:Simple Solution using DNS

[J'raxis]

Careful, thats a Macintosh-format hosts file. Make sure you do this to make it work on Unix and Windows:

lynx -dump 'http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~atman/spam/Hosts.sh tml' | awk '{ print $3"\t"$1 }' > new.file

Then copy or append new.file to your /etc/hosts.

DARTMail Targeting

[lord13]

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.

ARIN Info

[JumboMessiah]

Looks like I'll be adding this to my access table. Information from ARIN on doubleclick and MessageMedia's netblocks.

• www.doubleclick.com

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

• www.messagemedia.com

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

Doubleclick IP blocks

[ahodgson]

For your firewalls
-------------------

204.176.152.248/21
206.65.181.96/22
206.65.181 .104/21
63.85.84.0/24
204.176.177.0/24
208.211. 225.0/24
208.203.243.0/24
204.178.112.160/19
20 4.253.104.0/23
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
199.95.210.0/24
199.95.206.0/22

Re:Unrelated to the core business?

[brinn10]

Actually DARTMail is used to deliver email to OPT-IN customers of email publications. The DARTMail functionality simply allows publishers to make sure the ads in that opt-in mail are targeted to the correct audience based on non-personal data like geographical region or domain name. This entire thread is based on a gross misinterpretation of what DARTMail does.

take a deep breath...

[zama]

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.

They provide instructions for Opting Out

[GuNgA-DiN]

You can find instructions for opting out of a single mailing list here: http://www.doubleclick.com/us/corporate/privacy/pr ivacy/email-opt-out.asp.

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!

Wrong Information in /. Submission

[pclinger]

Everyone,

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 /. editors would not read through the page to realize that this is not spam.