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Spammer Sues List Broker
BuckMulligan writes: "This article describes a lawsuit brought by a spam company against a list brokerage warehouse for selling e-mail addresses of persons who didn't opt-in. What this means is that those marketing lists created by data brokers aren't even accurate enough for sending spam."
This brokerage warehouse wouldn't happened to be called HOTMAIL.COM ... would it ?? ;-)
How do you read this article with the bouncing laptops all over it?
...do lists of people who opt-in for spam even exist? Are they big enough to fit on one 8.5x11" piece of paper?
Who the hell would be stupid enough to opt-in for spam?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I dunno about the content of the article, but the floating laptop adds sure are annoying.
Arrr, it be the infamous pirate, No Beard Pete!
I wish we could give these spammers the punishment that they deserve.
What OS do you want to abuse today?
Maybe they could just send an email to everyone asking them if they've like to opt-in.
--It's Pimptastic!--
That all those fake addresses people have been 'seeding' the internet with have finaaly begun to have an effect. Maybe the whole industry will eat itself from the inside out. Hopefully the two sides here can sue each other to oblivion.
Do a google search before posting.
The sad part of this is that tax dollars are funding the ability for these cretins to sue each other.
The company said it used the Mindset Interactive and Inurv lists to send messages to thousands of e-mail account holders. It claims the companies said the data were collected with the consent of the owners and could be used for direct marketing.
This is most likely false. How many e-mails have you received stating that you indicated you wanted to subscribe to some form of mass-e-mailing, but didn't? And how do people receive spam only 8 hours after setting up an e-amil address?
Spammers can sue people? That just aint right. Regardless, if you buy 10 million e-mail addresses, look at how many of those addresses are going to be canceled, or changed in just one day. Our ISP has 400 users, and we change usernames, add, and remove users daily. And thats just a 400~ customer base! Maybe if the list makers get sued, they'll have to adhear to the actually 'Opt-in' theory! Then maybe I'll stop getting stuff about Viagra that I don't need, Hair loss products that I don't need, Viacream *shudder*, Ferimones, and the other list of absolutely stupid shit that I can't believe anyone would buy, let alone try to sell! But thats just my opinion.
Can all fish swim?
Drug dealer files lawsuit against drug supplier for selling him some bad weed, and some cocaine "padded" with baking soda and talcum.
That wouldn't really make any sense, MS dosen't want people sending you spam, it just increases their bandwidth usage. They've even gone to the effort of creating good spam filters and the ability to block hosts that have spammed you in the past
A Google search did not return any information about Inurv Inc.
Personally, I think this is the best line in the whole article. Google, final proof that you do, or do not, exist.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
Proper Opt-in lists are a good thing. Now, if someone sells a non-opt in list or SPAMMING software, making the claim that it is a valid marketing method, they should be hung out to dry.
I for one would be happy to testify in this type of case.
Bitching and moaning, does not cut it. You must fight the SPAM!
Fight Spammers!
It'd be interesting to have an agency that you could send your e-mail address and preferences to that could be checked by potential buyers of e-mail lists.
It could serve as a free service to the people who care enough to act on their need not to recieve spam. Any reputible company would check their databases with the 3rd party database and remove the e-mail addresses of people who opted out of all spam. Maximizing their direct marketing costs of sending out mailings.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
As always, it's the lawyers who win!
One scumball sues another, or the good guys sue the bad guys, or the bad guys sue the good guys, the lawyers never lose!
Forget IT, that's what my career should have been.
Why, that wouldn't happen to be this bunch of spyware monkeys, would it?
And your telling me that their email list gathering methods might be unethical? Who'd have thunk it?
rOD.
Rod Begbie done this, and he's not
I always "opt in" on these things with a fake email address. I hope to water down thier lists so they will eventually just give up.
If enough people did this, those lists might go away.
Another place where you get this is on product registration. Usually the agreement is in the fine print somewhere on paper so you don't get warned during the registration. Usually something about business partners.
They also use web 'bots that search the internet for all email addrs and spam anything they find. Heck, you could even use dns to spam every domain such as abuse@x.com webmaster@x.com etc. Evil, and spammers do far worse. Heck, all those "enter to win a prize" at your local radio stations, etc. probably sell their info to the spam listers and mass-mailers to make addition revenue.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
I know that I have never consiously opted-in for spam, but I get it on my "registration" email account quite frequently (I maintain a registration account that I only use when registering for things--thus I do not need to pay attention to it often).
When registering for things over the net, sometimes the terms of service require that you accept email from them. Of course their privacy statement says that they will never divulge your information, but we all know that this is not true. Just think about EggHead, or any other company that sold its assets while getting their listing on fuckedcompany.com.
Then there is the fine print on the email. "By reading this email, you consent to be included in our email list. If you with to unsubscribe, please click on this link which really doesn't work anyway."
All in all, I think this is a good step by the SPAM company to limit its liability. If someone sues the spammer, he can point his finger elsewhere and say that they bought a list of verified opt-in email addresses, and that in good faith, he wasn't sending SPAM to anyone who didn't want it.
DFossMeister
No Not Again! Its whats for dinner.
Uhh, this isn't a troll, it's a true story and it might shed somelight on how spam operators do their dirty deeds.
About 2 months ago I had the chance to take a road trip with one of my best buds to go see his father down in bakersfield. For those that don't know what bakersfield is, it's a shithole of a dirty little town somewhere between Sacramento and LA on the I5.
Now if it's a shithole of a little town, why would I in my right mind want to go there, sleep on a floor for 3 days, and eat crappy food. Well, my friends dad *supposidly* had a T1 line going into his apartment and was running spam operations from that. I told my friend that's bullshit, Ma bell don't run T1's to anything but businesses, i've ordered enough of them to know.
We got down there, I was expecing to walk in, and find a wirespeed DSL modem or something. Upon closer inspection I found a CSU/DSU and a cisco 2500 router. Holy shit this guy really did have a T1 line. I started talking to him about the legal/social ramifications of his business. After about 30 minutes of talking to him I could tell, he got a hair up his butt one day thinking spam was going to be a big money maker for him, paid someone to set him up and that was it. Not only did he not have a clue that hijacking someones SMTP server is bad, but he said SMTP servers that don't run open relays are interferring with his ability to do business and started screaming "ITS MY RIGHT TO SPAM AND ANYONE WHO TRIES TO STOP ME IS INTRUDING ON MY AMERICAN RIGHTS TO RUN A BUSINESS"
I stopped talking to him after that. He just would not accept that using someone elses server without their permission is just plain wrong. Anyways...
He started trying to talk me and my friend into getting into the business with him. I told him it would be a conflict of interest for me because I am a sysadmin of course, but I would be more than happy to watch him work to learn for myself.
His network consisted of 6 win98 machines, 1 BSD box that he had no idea what it did. They ran some windows GUI based tool called SMTPscan. Basically it had 2 boxes to input your IP range into, it would scan that range and report back usable servers. I can't remember the actual name of the program he used to send the mail with, but I remember him pasting that list from SMTP scan into it.
Also to note was his lack of a true list management system. His remove e-mails pointed back to a hotmail account so his main server would be isolated from any attacks. He would manually go into his hotmail account. These removes did nothing though, let me explain it from his point of view.
Basically when your remove yourself from a spam list, it's just for that spam. The spammer still has a list for some new product that he hasn't sent out yet, if he hasn't sent it out how can you be removed?
So this guy maintains a list of 4,000,000 e-mails and ALLWAYS spams to all of them. Legally he's found a loophole to cover his ass and can happily spam the same list as long as he's selling something different.
I just wanted to post this so everyone would know, spammers aren't really the most technically minded people. To them it's
1. Spam
2. ****
3. Profit
While to us it's
1.Spam
2.Flood someone elses server, slander some legit company by relaying pr0n spam. Eat Bandwidth
3. Profit
I hope you enjoyed this post, please mod accordingly if you did.
--toq
Reading the article makes it seem more like a 'buyer beware' situation than a court case where the company will actually get money.
Most people don't use their real email address when registering for something, especially not if it's 'free'. So it can be expected that a lot of emails on a list like that will be fake.
OTOH, the 'opt-in' thing could hold up or not in court. If there is a forced opt-in for a registration, some people still register, then wait until the first spam comes and send back a msg saying that they didn't ask for any spam in the first place.
Meh. I can see the company winning maybe legal fees but probably nothing else.
Have you thought about what you're looking at today?
It's that the company buying from them has the nerve to act like it was some kind of surprise. "An email list company collecting addresses without permission? I'm stunned..."
Ya gotta love it when companies that rely on buying marketing lists - always a little shady to begin with - start questioning ethics. Maybe I should show them the "Junk Mail" folder for my Hotmail account...
The best technique I have seen for this was a usenet
The poster had visited the websites the spammers were advertising (usualy p0rn sites) and collected legit e-mail addresses from the html source (usualy billing@ sales@ etc).
He/she added this to the usenet .sig (with the explanitory note) and let the spambots harvesting addresses do the work for them :-)
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
Why can't we spam the spammers? Add their email addrs to other spammers lists, etc. Heck, here is where to deprecate Virtumundo Inc.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
I used to invoke mutt with a script that sent a complaint message to abuse@postmastergeneral.com every time I read my e-mail.
They claimed that all their lists were opt-in, but actually they had no idea. They accepted lists from their customers and took their word that they were opt-in. They would happily remove you from their mailing lists, but the next customer that submitted a list that included your name would automatically re-add your name.
So, the perfect solution to me was to simply complain about all the goddamn spam regardless of whether I had received any or not. That would remove my name from all their mailing lists *for that day*. It solved my problem completely. I don't give a fuck about whatever problems I might have caused for them.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Oh, sh*t. A search for "Anonymous Coward" didn't turn up anything on Google either. I guess that means that either I don't exist.
Well, at least I can't get modded down.
Here's a link to an earlier article than the newsbytes story although it's very sparse on details. Looks like they *might* have contact info for Inurv though... Phone number perhaps?
"Officials at Inurv could not be reached for comment."
Couldn't resist this. I checked and "Anonymous Coward" (with the quotes to get the exact phrase) appears in Google about 30,200 times. And the second instance is (of course) Slashdot.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
"This article describes a lawsuit brought by a spam company against a list brokerage warehouse for selling e-mail addresses of persons who didn't opt-in"
This sounds good. This is someone who actually expected an opt in/out system to work.
That was not sarcasm, many people would not object to targetted (mass) email for services that they were interested in - if they could be sure of getting off the list when they want to.
Of course, I don't suppose that there are many of us who would choose to subscribe to the get rich quick / penis enlargement / gogocity (spamming &%&^% - had to mention them...) lists.
Assuming that Virtumundo really did get screwed when they were given a bogus database, then kudos to them for showing that they are a somewhat responsible company.
It would appear that they are different from Joe Spammer who uses Korean mail servers and provides a bogus reply-to address. The fact that they even read the complaints they got proves that they aren't out to (purposely) screw people.
I've gotten some things that I thought were complete spam, but when researching where they originated from, I realized there were times when signing up on a website, I forgot to uncheck all of the "I want to receive e-mail from our partner sites" buttons. While they really should be opt-in, instead of opt-out, it's my own damn fault for not double-checking my work.
I have no problem receiving advertising mail if it's because I forgot to uncheck a box, or accidentally checked a box. The problem is when there's no way to get off the list. It sounds like these folks actually read replies and care about whether they're spamming or not, and if so, good for them. Personally, I think e-mail marketing is a waste of bandwidth, but if I can prevent myself from receiving junk mails in the future, I don't have a problem with it.
(On the other hand, they could just be some schmoes who spammed knowingly or on purpose, and are now just trying to pass the buck.)
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
It's funny, I can't recall a single junk email ever received from a legitimate US network address. Either the Japanese and Russians are the only enterprising spammers, or the US spammers aren't as 'legit' as they claim to be.
Not news to me; I killed him. You want more details? Check out eBay in the upcoming weeks. Be sure to bid on all his body parts (including lots of organs). I have a friend bidding on his heart, otherwise I'd tell you when that one was going on the chopping bl... um.. auction block.
Even I can cut and paste. Check it out:
0 95 261
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=28821&cid=3
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
There is no magical list of opt-in email accounts full of people who are checking their email every 15 seconds looking for some new, wonderful offer from people they've never heard of.
I don't believe that there is _ANYONE_ out there who signs up for spam lists say, "I can't wait to see what kind of wonderful unsolicited email I get!" That's just stupid.
NOBODY WANTS YOUR CRAP!!!
If you're dumb enough to think that a mailing list is full of pure opt-in accounts, you're dumber than the half dozen people who purchased spam-offered goods last year. You should be put in padded rooms with no corners and no sharp objects.
Got it ;o)
;o)
./ effect.. Probably the funniest thing there is that guy's name. So, Google has triumphed once again.
Posted somewhere down the page, I listed a link found on Google to a earlier article by bizjournal.com. In that article, they list Inurv Inc from Glendale, CA. No searches of general business directories for Glendale CA turned anything up, but this tells us a whole lot more... Of course, the Secretary of State should have some good info
I'll post the general info here in case Sec State website are susceptible to
Corporation
INURV, INC.
Number: C2381410
Date Filed: 9/28/2001
Status: active
Jurisdiction: California
Mailing Address
210 N. CENTRAL AVENUE #210
GLENDALE, CA 91203
Agent for Service of Process
GEORGI KARAYACOUBIAN
1443 ROCKGLEN AVENUE #4
GLENDALE, CA 91205
I think that this is proof of that.
RonB
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
From the article: (20020320/Media Contact: Richard Stern, Virtumundo, 816/931-1831 /WIRES ONLINE, LEGAL, BUSINESS/)
......... nah....
They would be related would
I hate our litigious society as much as the next person, but I think we've finally found a good use for all the lawyers: tying up spammers in court. I mean, if they're sitting in court, they can't be sending anyone spam, can they?
From his other post, curiously with the same text, word for word... Life_Enhancement_Society (NETBLK-BRW-3614-LIFEENHANC)
4551 California Ave. #10
Bakersfield, CA 93309 US
Netname: BRW-3614-LIFEENHANC
Netblock: 65.89.25.0 - 65.89.25.255
Record last updated on 10-Mar-2001.
Dutcher,Les (EVERYTHINGHERESITE-DOM)
7850 White Lane, #E221
Bakersfield, CA 93309
US
Domain Name: EVERYTHINGHERESITE.COM
Administrative Contact:
Dutch, L (LD8015)
admin@everythingheresite.com
7850 White Ln E221
Bakersfield, CA 93309
US
661-637-1230 123 123 1234
Billing Contact:
Dutcher, Les (LD7700) mspss@hotmail.com
Dutcher,Les
7850 White Lane, #E221
Bakersfield, CA 93309
661-637-1220 (FAX) 661-637-1230
Record last updated on 07-May-2001.
Record expires on 07-Feb-2003.
Record created on 07-Feb-2001.
Database last updated on 1-Mar-2002 07:48:00 EST.
Domain servers in listed order:
SPOT.EVERYTHINGHERESITE.COM 65.89.25.5
LARRY.EVERYTHINGHERESITE.COM 65.89.25.6
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
Bernard Shifman sends his "resume". The honeypots can his resume and trace the origin back to Shifman. One such offense is in England, where spam is punishable by time in a dungeon. A class-action suit is brought against Shifman because of his spam. In response, irate recipients of Shifman's resume tell DoubleClick to pass off every spam they get to a specific user profile (matched to only send to Bernie). Bernie gets the idea that he can make money selling address lists and saves all the addresses he gets from the recipients and multiple forwards. One spam company decides to sue Bernie for a bogus list. Just imagine the scene in the courtroom with a bunch of whiny little kids arguing before Your Honor.
Hey, I get all that crap all the time, Debt Consolidation, University Diplomas, Pr0n, ad infinitum. There isn't really much to be done, except change your e-mail address. You can try and sue spammers, but there will always be more, and they will always get lists of e-mail addresses.
The whole reason Spamming exists is because it's so freakin' easy! I ready the guys story above from Bakersville with the T1 in his house, and the 4,000,000 e-mail addresses always hit. The guy has no clue what he's doing, yet he spams spams spams like there's no tomorrow... Is he making money? I hope not. Spam isn't effective for the most part. That's why you'll now see Spam messages trying to disguise themselves with subjects like "Hey, what's up?" or "Information you requested" Just to get you to open it. Just like the "Hi, how are you" and "I love you" virus. It's praying on human emotions.
There isn't an easy way to deal with Spamming. Laws, lawyers, blah blah hardly ever work cause every would rather hit delete than truly try and pursue the bastards. So they best solution is to try and secured more SMTP servers and keep at least that avenue of Spamming closed.
Contrary to popular belief, I don't actually make my website for other people to look at.
I have never thought of that, interesting.
I wouldn't have a problem posting my own comments again. But someone else's 5+, I'd definitely have to quote them, unless they were an AC. I'd feel like I was plagurizing (?spelling?).
Some could see it as Karma Whoring, but why? The whole karma points do basically nothing for you.
Neat idea.
Sean
This lousy SOB has brokered my email to dozens of places and the link to opt out was broken until I bitched about it. I also found the owners of the spam in whois and sent them personal email raising Hell about it. It hope the courts break the bastard's back and that I had some small part in it.
I read about your lawsuit on Slashdot today. Even though many are bashing your company for various reasons, I am writing to congratulate you and to thank you for respecting my privacy. I wish you best of luck in the lawsuit and hope that it will start a new trend of respecting customer privacy.
First the flaw is that a company thinks it is wise to buy a list and expect it to be perfect for spam. Second can we say that this company was spammed with a bogus list?
Why did the company not test the list before launching all the emails? Lastly, will there be a new legal set of cases:
"Joe User" suing "Spam Company" for sending spam. "Joe User" wins case but is delayed on reward payment($$) because "Spam Company" will in turn sue "Direct Marketing Company" for the bad list. Shouldn't "Joe User" be listed as a plantiff on the "Direct Marketing Company" suit.
Virtumundo said this became clear when it started to get large numbers of complaints about spamming from message recipients and Internet service providers.
You mean to tell me that masss emailing the same thing to many people in this way wasn't spaming? They never checked with the providers if these were legit addresses, so they, themselves are spamming. Sue Virtumundo. They sent the email; they spammed; you sue.
thelikesofwhich.com
Just as long as I don't get an email saying "Move out of CowboyNeal's place next month!"
Does voting on Slashdot opt me in to some marketing company spam list?
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
See other posts for exact article link.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Phillip-Morris claimed that they didn't know cigarrettes were addictive.
Napster claimed that they were unaware of people trading illegal music on their network.
What's next? Some crack dealer claiming that because he bought his stash from someone else, he assumed the other person was selling a legal product?
Gee...I should have bought those offered speakers off the back of that van that one time and then claim I thought it was a legit store.
No that's not what it means, though that reason is listed, the focus is on the emails that were not legitimate opt-in's. And I'd think that the fact that this angered the company in question means that they aren't a spammer, they seem to be attempting to send to opt in's only.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
so there IS a way for spam to be profitable then
Got an email address for them? Would be nice to have it get dumped in a few spam lists. Turn the spammers back on the spammers and all. But then, that would be immoral, and none of us here would do that, would we?
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Lynn has any other names? Or is it like a "Madonna" or "Prince" thing??
A physical business fax-spammed you? That's great! Write them a polite note, explaining that sending bulk faxes is wrong. Attach a copy of their spam to it, with all identifying marks removed of course. Go to their office, tie it to a brick, and toss it through their damn window.
What's a plate glass window run, $100-200 dollars? If you do it in the winter, even better, no heat for the bastards when they come into work the next morning. Too many expensive lessons like that, and they'll quit.
Unfortunately, it's a lot harder to track email spammers. I usually try to have their accounts cancelled, but that's about it. Then a couple of weeks ago, some dumbass sent me one of those chain-letter "Buy Reports on Internet Marketing" pyramid scheme things. The one where you expect people to send you a five dollar bill in the mail. That's right, the moron attached his REAL ADDRESS. It's two hours from where I live, even better. Not worth a trip by itself, but if I ever happen to be in the area, I'll stop by. Saved the address.
Communication is only possible between equals
Litigation is in the air like LA smog. Wow maybe some posters and /. will be served next.
'Virtu*mundo'?
It's cool they're starting to feed on one another, and, although, I personally find cannibalism repugnant, in this case I'll hope for mutual annihilation. The econiche of bottomfeeders is an ugly place.
heuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
After finding no money in the annoying socially dispicable spam industry, the spammers find a more lucrative annoying and socially dispicable industry (law).
Exactly! When you go through one of those registrations that requires an email, make it, for instance, abuse@their.dom or even better abuse@their_upstream.dom. Don't opt in for anything, if they're good guys nothing happens. If they are spammers, they spam themselves, or their upstream.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
First, remember, your tax dollars are at work at the FTC. Every spam - and I do mean every spam - should be bounced or forwarded to uce@ftc.gov - how else can they file federal lawsuits if we don't help them?
m to make it obvious you don't agree.
Secondly, there are a number of different types of spammers:
A - Big Companies that use Special Partners - basically, they tend not to ask you - and once they've sold your address, it gets resold - always check the NO YOU MAY NOT INFORM YOUR PARTNERS box. There is ALWAYS a loophole to permit the needed info for credit bureaus and info needed to validate your account, so feel free saying No. And JUST SAY NO to the "other partners" - these are just spam houses.
B - Regulated companies that sell your email - These are the worst, cause you HAVE to do business with them and they resell like crazy. Always insist on Opting Out.
C - People who buy lists. They think they have ethics, but the story shows how most of those emails were harvested by those in D and E or maybe A or B. Regardless - you never gave your permission to THEM to spam you. ALWAYS send a copy to abuse@company.who.sells.product.they.advertise.co
D - Spamsters who harvest email but will remove you from their lists. Still scum. Always use spambot.net on these dirty dogs - never respond cause they might be category E.
E - Spamsters who break the law flagrantly and see nothing wrong with this. Probably libertarians. Should all be shot up close with polycore rounds from an auto shotgun. Repeatedly. Turn these in too, on general principle.
Best solution for avoiding spam? Move to a country with actual privacy rights where it's not even slightly "legal" - which is not the USA.
If you can get the home email of all your politicians, make sure you cc: them on all such abuse emails. Always. Until they pay for it, it's not a problem.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
I remember working a loooong time ago (Lotus 1-2-3, anyone?) performing data entry for a company that provided "qualified leads" for sale. Supposedly, you could be assured that you would get sales leads that conformed to your requirements... salary/age range, investment interests, etc. Most often, I'd be handed a regional telephone book for the area that was ordered (say, Denver), and would type in everything listed. So, old story with a new twist.
I suppose the one good thing to come of employment there was that thru sheer drudgery, I learned to blind touch-type the entire keyboard (numbers & special characters included).
This lawsuit is meaningless to the internet user community. Say Virtumundo (the people who bought the list) wins. All it means is that Mindset (the people who collected the list) have to pay out damages, nothing else. Mindset won't suddenly email all the people in their DB and say "We're sorry we collected your name. Would you like to be taken off?" Nope - they'll just keep on selling their lists to someone else who won't care about who they spam. And Virtumundo will go buy a list from someone else and spam away again, although they'll get it from a more "reputable" source. I applaud Virtumundo for what they're doing, but it's not going to change anything in the end.
I hate it when seemingly consequential stuff gets posted when it's only useless drivel...
taco
"Corrupting our youth one mind at a time"
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From: LendWare Info
To: waldoNO@SPAMwaldo.net
Date: 07/13/01 2:16 PM
Subject: Thanks for Applying for a Loan OnLine
Dear Waldo Merideth,
Replace with Lender Name Here is pleased to inform you that your online loan application has been received and we will be contacting you in the near future.
Thank you for choosing Replace with Lender Name Here
Sincerely,
Replace with Company President's Name Here
President
"I cannot *buy* an opt-in list."
Opt-in lists, by definition, have to be created in a one-on-one business relationship. Otherwise, one can just take any ol' list of random people, sell it to someone else, and say "uh, yeah, sure...of course they want you to contact them!"
Wait, that sounds familiar after all..it's how most spammers today work!
they finally realized that asdf@asdf.com and john@doe.com and others similar to those aren't real.. now I need to start a new schema for email addresses..
(If these are in fact REAL Email addresses, I apologize in advance, since you must be getting a s-load of email.)
"An e-mail marketing firm on Tuesday said it has filed lawsuits against two e-mail list providers, alleging the lists it bought from the companies were full of non-existent addresses and people who hadn't asked to receive commercial marketing messages."
So what you are telling me that either there are ethical spammers or they are worried that they aren't getting their moneys worth.
Hmmmm.... I wonder what they are going to do about all those fake email addresses?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
for not opting in
Did the plaintiff pause to consider the irony of an opt-out spam advertising an opt-in list? Did the plaintiff pause to reflect on what to expect from a company that would use opt-out spam to advertise their product? Especially when the product is (allegedly) an opt-IN list?
That said, I still hope the defendant gets hung, drawn, and quartered.
Build stuff. Stuff that walks, stuff that rolls, whatever.
It was a good post. I enjoyed it the first time. Now I wonder if you made it up.
The argument for reposting it here can be made, I won't contest that. But presenting it as a new post is dishonest. At the very least you should have added a line to let the reader know it was a repost. Failing to do that calls your honesty into question.
If you're "desperate for karma" then you just don't get it anyway. Karma doesn't mean squat. I've had a +2 posting bonus for years - does that make me better than someone else? Of course not. There's a cap for a reason you know - to discourage people like you from karma whoring. What on earth do you gain from it? Unless you are burning karma on trolls and page widening and worthless crap like that?
Reposting someone elses comments, without attributing them, is absolutely indefensible.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
(Regular Poster who is posting AnonimousCowardly for good reason)
My wife's first husband is a minor drug dealer. It's one reason she married him, when she was addicted to the stuff after college. She was the drug tester when they got a new supply of raw coke. If she got high, they bought it. If she got sick, they walked away. What a life...
But after they did buy the raw coke, they had to cut it with powder or else it would be too strong, and the users would OD after the first line. They usually used a baby powder, not J&J Talcum powder, but something that was yellowish.
So the other dealers they sold to would end up getting "padded" coke. But they knew it, and the prices reflected it. That is the important thing. But as I said, when they bought the original package, it was tested to insure it wasn't already cut down.
I suppose that after reading dilbert off and on for years I should have expected it, but within a week of signing to have it mailed daily, and marking/unmarking every box to the "don't send" category, I discovered
1) the site carring the daily cartoon to which the email links is down about 80% of the time.
2) It took less than a week to spam me for rugrats . .
*sigh*
hawk
And I don't believe the story anyway...which makes it a recycle-karma-whore-troll.
wowo I can't wait to see the BS storm of lies and hypocrisy as the spammer sue-a-thon gets cooking. No of course they never knew all those people didn't opt in. Whoever would have guessed that direct marketers could be so unscrupulous?
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
... should we still call them spammers?
If it's for people who have genuinely opted-in to a bulk mailing service then the mail is solicited, isn't it?
Surely spam is still defined as unwanted, unsolicited mail.
Even if some spammers do blatantly lie, telling me I've opted in for their mailing 'services'.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
AOLers, other newbies who haven't gotten that 'newsletter == mailing list == Free Gift == Special Offer == SPAM' symlink cemented into their brains yet. It also doesn't help that so many companies are fond of that flowery marketing language.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
There is an enormous profiling business that grabs up all of your data and sells it to whomever! Those "trusted partners" are anyone under the sun who is willing to pay a fee for a list of personal information. Check out EPIC on this: Profiling. You'd be shocked to see what aspects of your life can be cataloged and marketed. They have databases on medical conditions, including bladder control problems!
The spammers actually have names, now you can track them down and torture them, then rape them, then kill them. Stuff their non-accredited university diplomas up their asses!!!
Seriously, they took example.com live a while back. http://example.com/ resolves to a page saying "These domain names are reserved for use in documentation and are not available for registration."
I don't think they've got any mail server set up, though, so it's still safe to use them for fake mail addresses. I think.
Proud to be / Smiley-free / Since Nineteen / Ninety-Three
What's his IP range, or who's his upstream provider?
Personaly I'm fond of goto@hell.com
One of the two 'opt-in' brokers listed in the article is Mindset Interactive, the captains of industry behind the VX2/Transponder/Respondmiter/Netpal/TPS108/etc. family of Windows spyware programs. For all intents and purposes, those programs are identical. Upon installation, they harvest and transmit the e-mail addresses stored under the Registry key
t Account Manager\\Accounts\\00000001
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Microsoft\\Interne
This is the location of the primary e-mail address configured in MS Outlook.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
If the pyramid scheme wants you to use the mail in any way (e.g., sending that $5), it falls under the jurisdiction of the USPS Postal Inspector.
Send it to your postal inspector. I believe you can just put it in an envelope with "US Postal Inspector - Pyramid Scheme Enclosed" written on it - no postage - and the carrier will accept it and pass it along.
Even if it's a private mailbox the Post Office could decide to stop all deliveries to that address pending an investigation, turn it over to the FTC or local AG, etc.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
It'd be interesting to have an agency that you could send your e-mail address and preferences to that could be checked by potential buyers of e-mail lists.
s/agency/single point of failure/g
It could serve as a free service to the people who care enough to act on their need not to recieve spam.
And watch it get DOSsed off the Net by the real spammers.
Any reputible company would check their databases with the 3rd party database and remove the e-mail addresses of people who opted out of all spam.
How would the 3rd party database recoup its bandwidth costs?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I think this would make a good Jerry Springer episode.
22 year old entrepreneur ("lynn") trying to start up a company. (at least a few people would have sympathy for him) But he really runs an internet spam agency.
Two other companies, one who promises that it "doesn't deal with spam companies", could get tricked into appearing. Inurv would be the mystery guest since we don't know anything about them. (Maybe their director of strategic sales could turn out to be Lynn's mother's ex-lesbian lover!)
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
I've been using custom email addresses to track where spammers harvest my email address from.
I get a lot of spam from a special offer I signed up for via mp3.com a while back for a diamond ria contest.
Any email address I have ever posted on a web page receives spam. Any email address I've used to post to a large mailing list also receives spam.
I have never opted-in for any special email offers so I know that they are lying when they say that I did. A large percentage of the spam I receive contains words like "You opted in" and is addressed to an address that identifies to me which site it was harvested from.
Coding Blog
Check out the nasty adverts on newsbytes.
Robert
WebMaster:
BinFeeds
XXX Thumbnailed Image Newsgroups but
Anytime a site asks me for an e-mail address I just enter theKing@graceland.com
I hope Elvis doesn't mind.
don't you spam on my blue suede shoes
Fly Fish? Participate in our forum
If it really was an opt-in list, I wonder if the people on it intended to 'opt-in' for Virtumundo products and services. Probably not. Which begs the question, is it really possible to share/borrow opt-in lists? Surely the people that opt-in, do so only for one particular servce/product.
I.O.U One Sig.
there is such a thing as a legitimate opt-in email list, because all the people on it had their info card swiped at the tradeshow... remember the last time you did that? You're opting IN. Why do you think people even set up shop at a trade show? to get your fricken email address!! That's completely legitimate, and often connects people to products like consenting adults...
I make these: http://beatseqr.com
SolidBlue Software just realased a Windows spam filter called SolidBlue Spam Interceptor.
ender-iii
To avoid spam, most non-stupid people give fake email addresses wherever an email address is required to register (like the New York Times), if possible. This is filling up their spam databases with so many phony entries that the databases become useless. This reminds me of a good mp3 by Three Dead Trolls In A Baggie
Repeal the DMCA!
Scum suing scum. I feel bad about hoping one of them will win. Why can't they both lose?
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
these people thought of that already
A spammer.. bought a product frequently offered in spam.. was upset when they discovered that the spam they bought into was misrepresented.. and sued... most likely.. another spammer.
Keep it up guys.. This takes care of the email listing spams... has someone's sex drive not grown by 581%?? You need to start suing!
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I always do abuse@(whatever-domain-it-is).com
"Receive great offers!"
"Need a new Computer? No Credit - Bad Credit -- No Problem!"
"8 FREE Movie Tickets Any Theater - Nothing To Join"
"Award Confirmation"
When they were operating, I was getting about 5 spams a day; so, I took the maximum steps [Send in their upstreams all the way to the backbone plus the DNS server into the abuse.net database.]
Plus I sent them a contract proposal that they could agree to by sending me an e-mail. Haven't heard from them since...
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
Could the reason behind the lawsuit simply be a bit of arse covering by this spamming company....
Have they been threatened with legal action from the people/ISP's they've spammed and so are getting into a position to be able to say, we are not at fault it was the list brokers?
Kudos, sir.
He always was a cheap hack.
The satisfaction comes in knowing that a company pays some guy, who lost his job at the AOL help-desk, just to have me delete the shit without even opening it. So WTF?