I’m getting slammed by spam advertising URLs at http://perfectdeliveries.com/ from
Ethix Marketing LLC
711 S. Carson Street Suite 4
Carson City, Nevada 89701
The kicker? They’re violating CAN SPAM while they’re doing it. Seriously, sending mail out through open relays and proxies with forged From: addresses is a violation of CAN SPAM. And they’re spamming for ambulance chasers.
Spammers, eh?
Over the years, some of my clients have found it expedient to give me email addresses at their domains. These addresses forward mail addressed to laura@clientsite to my own mailbox. Generally these are so I can be added to internal mailing lists and have access to their internal tools.
It’s often amusing to see the spam that comes through to those addresses. Over the last few weeks I’ve received multiple spams advertising an email appending service.
Let the irony sink in. An email appending service is sending me an email at a client company offering the client company the opportunity to append email addresses. “See how accurate our appending is!”
How accurate can a service be if they can’t even target their own spam correctly?
In addition to the appalling targeting they’re also violating CAN SPAM (no physical postal address), their website is a collection of broken links and they don’t provide any company name or information in the email or on the website.
To top it all off, the mail says, “if you’re not the right person to act on this mail, please forward this to the right person.” Followed by a standard legal disclaimer that says, “The information contained in this e-mail message and any attachments is confidential information intended only for the use of individuals or entities named above. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail at the originating address.”
I wonder if blogging about the utter email incompetence about mail from David Williams, Business Development (phone number: 800-961-5127) violates the confidentiality clause?
I’ve been getting a continual stream of spam from a psychic. I blogged about it a few months ago, and even had a call with the psychic’s ESP. None of that seemed to matter. Every few days I’d get another ad for psychic candles, or recording services or whatever. It wasn’t mail I could easily filter, and every time I’d get it I’d growl and dump it in my junk folder.
Yesterday, I received another mail from her. The subject line is “list opt-in verification.” Really? Could she really be actually confirming her list? Actually asking if I want to continue receiving mail?
I’ve been seeing more and more social network spam recently, mostly on twitter. In some ways it’s even more annoying than email spam. Here I am, happily having a conversation with a friend and then some spammer sticks their nose in and tweets “myproduct will solve your problem!”
It’s happened twice in the last week.
In most recent example, I was asking my twitter network for some advice on pasta making. I’ve made pasta a few times, but it’s never been exactly right. Not having an Italian grandmother to ask, I was looking for someone with experience in pasta making to answer a few questions. I was having an ongoing conversation with a friend who was helping me troubleshoot my problems. He gave me his recipe to try to see if that would work better. I thanked him profusely and replied that I would give it a try but probably not tomorrow because it was accounting day and those tend to run late. Someone replied to that tweet suggesting I try some random accounting software to make my accounting easier.
Just… No.
Interjecting product ads in a conversation may be the “acceptable” and “best practice” way to market through social networking. But, I can promise that you’re no better the guy who interrupts conversations at parties so he can hand out business cards for his affiliate program selling herbal male enhancement drugs.
Don’t be That Guy.
Update: Today’s twitter spam was from one of the email accreditation services attempting to sell me their email delivery services.