Spammers already abusing Vine

Spammers have already figured out how to abuse the new twitter video service (VINE) to make money. I wish I could say I was surprised, but spammers (and scammers) are some of the earliest adopters of technology out there. They adopt it and try to extract as much money as possible before the property owners can catch up and implement anti-abuse technology.
Too few companies actually build products with anti-abuse technology built in. This costs them and the victims money.

Bad unsubscribe processes
Timely and appropriate mail

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TWSD: avoid filters

I was cleaning out one of my spamtraps. This is the one that gets a ton of “legitimate” spam. In the last 12 hours it’s gotten spam advertising: T.G.I.Fridays, KFC, Applebees, LendingTree, Lasix Vision Institute, Khols, Burger King, Match.com, and Vistaprint.
The footer of some of the mails are making me laugh, though. It’s clear they’re trying to comply with CAN SPAM, but are having problems with content filtering. Here’s a brief selection of the footers:
Ondemand Research, 1O5 E.[34th]-Street Ste 144, New Y0rk, NY 1OO16
Ondemand Research, 105 E. 34th Street St #144, New York, NY 10016
0ndemand=Research, 1O5/E/./34th Street Ste 144,New Y0rk,NY=1OO16
Poor OnDemand Research, they just can’t catch a break.
EDIT: Just got a spam for Ruby Tuesday’s using a .pw domain.

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More on Rove Digital

Brian Krebs has more on Rove Digital and the criminal connection to other scammers and spammers.

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A Spam Blast from the Past

A couple of days ago an ex-employee of Opt-In Inc., was kind enough to do a Reddit AMA answering questions about their experience working with Steve Hardigree in the “legitimate” email marketing industry, back in the early 2000s.
The whole thing is worth a read, but I thought I’d share some of his more interesting answers here.
Everyone knows everyone

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