Oct
23
Nov
01
Regarding responsibilities in affiliate marketing
Quite some time back, the Data Protection Ombudsman in Finland has issued a position paper on affiliate marketing and the division of responsibilities therein. The document is naturally in Finnish only. The core message is following the money; holding the owners of the advertised products and services responsible for the processing of personal data in such situations. This is nice when (as so often happens) the affiliate marketers violate all laws on the books, remaining anonymous, not including anything on the file of personal data they use, spamming, etc.
Nov
11
St1 Yrityskortti: Dear Spamtrap, Get a Business Fuel Card
St1, a fuel chain in Finland, is advertising their business fuel card services in illegal spam. They started (no later, but possibly earlier than) in October, and the only visible change is that the spamming domain names and IP addresses have changed for today’s missives.
(It was “postipalvelu.com” in October, and the complaint on Oct 10 was sent to St1 representatives in email only. No response was received. Kirjekyyhky.com was registered to an anonymous party on November 8, 2013. Pretty damn quick for getting thousands of subscribers, just over the weekend, huh? Oh, but those aren’t subscribers in the traditional affiliate marketing sense, they’re just crap harvested from business registers and the EuroAds “publisher” freely admits this.)