Oct
17
Lateralus Enterprise / Tavoite Media: Spamming to sell SEO services to spamtraps
Lateralus Enterprise / Tavoite Media is spamming again, this time to advertise its own search engine optimization services.
Oct
15
CL-Yhtiöpalvelu: Renting temps to spamtraps
CL-Yhtiöpalvelu Oy (biz reg, www) is spamming to sell temps to spamtraps. Their partner in spam this time is Panic Marketing, who are unfortunately no stranger here. Their list is based on “Public sources on the Internet”, i.e. we’re spamming and we know it.
Oct
15
Power Competence: Selling business presentation skills to spamtraps
Power Competence Oy (see biz reg, www) joins the hordes of those businesses who figured purchasing a mailing list from Lateralus Enterprise / Tavoite Media / bisnesrekisteri.fi was a good idea. Unsubs and sending, I think, are handled by Developer’s Helsinki, aka netmonitor.fi, whose Terms of Service don’t seem to contain a single word on the topic of using the service to send unsolicited bulk email. Their services, in turn, are provided by Nebula, whose current Terms of Service (apparently only available in Finnish) don’t contain a single word on the topic. The old ones at Nebula, valid for contracts made before June 1, 2012, said that the customer is not allowed to use the Service for direct marketing that is either illegal or against good manners or to advertise their service in newsgroups, discussion forums or in other places where it is forbidden to do so. (My translation.) The argument that all spam is against good manners doesn’t ring a bell with them, apparently.
Oct
09
Quit smoking today!!!
During October, I’ve been seeing spam to my traps that has to do with quitting smoking with the help of electronic nicotine dispensers. It’s so far off the scale it’s not really mainsleaze, but there’s a few things here that need being published.
Oct
09
Lateralus Enterprise / Tavoite Media diving into “B2C”… with a harvest of the Finnish Business Information System
Ouch. Ouch!!!! How many ways can you fail?
Read more…
Oct
09
Redbox: COI Doesn’t Fix All Bulk Email Problems
Because Redbox has been actively confirming subscriptions to its lists, I’ve kept quiet about the spamtrap hits that I see from them. They’re doing the right thing to confirm. I don’t want to discourage them. But their initial acquisition process for these email addresses is resulting in more initial spamtrap hits than any reputable company whose bulk email I’ve observed before. I think that they and their ESPs — Cheetahmail, a subsidiary of Experian, and ExactTarget — need to know this. Further, this raises an important issue for many companies that use bulk email: what to do about problems that confirmed opt-in (COI) doesn’t solve.
Sep
30
Lowe’s: Offering Home Improvement Deals to a Spamtrap
Lowe’s, a U.S.-based hardware and home improvement store that competes directly with Home Depot, a few months ago started sending bulk email advertisements to a spamtrap that cannot have been live after 2002. Today Lowe’s hit a second spamtrap, an email address that (if it was ever live) closed in 2005. The ESP is ExactTarget.