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Milestones in the Annals of Junkmail
fdc writes: "Web pages are a great source of postal
addresses for direct mailers. Judging by some of the
addresses we've seen recently, it's evident that the data is
harvested not by humans, but by computer programs that scan web
pages for names and addresses. Several weeks ago we (the
Kermit
Project at
Columbia University)
announced a new release of our Kermit 95
communication software for Windows -- SSH, secure FTP, etc; cousin
of C-Kermit
for Unix (search Freshmeat). Since this was a major release, we
chose a new icon for it: the Columbia
crown. A web page
explained that this is the emblem of Columbia University: the
crown of King George the II of England (1727-1760), who founded
Columbia in 1754. JUST ONE WEEK LATER guess who received a postcard from
Dell."
You should be glad that AI has come this far. For an intelligent agent to be able to harvest addresses by clicking through web pages, and then mailing out postcards is truly an advancement of the technology.
Remember, there are good points to everything, even things like this which under normal circumstances could be described as "alienating our rights."
There are no clear King George + address on the web-page. This just looks like a prank database addition by someone at Dell on a slow day (probably a Kermit user, tho.)
Really, contact Dell and ask for an explanation. I think we'd all love to hear what kind of lame excuse they try to come up with in order to avoid admitting that they harvest spammable addreses from the net :)
Why would direct mail companies choose to use automated programs like this?
Let's look at what these programs give you:
1. A ton of results.
2. 80%(and probably a whole lot more, I'm just being conservative) of those results are probably false due to all those AOL member pages that haven't been updated in years, people who put up fake info, info that is out of date, etc.
Wouldn't this be bad for the direct mail companies? Clients that hire them want to reach as many real people as possible. The direct mail companies that use the methods mentioned in this story can never provide their clients with what they want, the ability to reach real consumers.
The Direct mail companies probably know this and either, are planning on changing it or don't care and are just interested in spamming as many people, real or not, as possible.
Direct mail companies interested in doing what they promise should think about the way they collect information in order to provide better service if they are a real company not just looking to spam everyone alive, or dead in this case.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I sent this letter to the kermit project address. Maybe someone here can answer it for me:
:)
--Begin--
Computers are stupid and would not be able to aggregate a name on one page to a snailmail address on another without human help, yet I can't find where King George and this address were listed near each other. Any ideas from which page this name and address were gleaned?
thx
very funny otherwise
Comment removed based on user account deletion
'sends email to that profile'
Err, snail mail, rather.
And it might not have been someone on your team at all. People use false data for setting up accounts all the time. Maybe they just thought this would be funny.
Heck, they were apparently right.
Kevin Fox