Nov
22

Lateralus Enterprise / Tavoite Media: Descending ever deeper into spamdom

Continuing his descent deeper into Spamland, my bestest friend Lateralus Enterprise / Tavoite Media is now advertising “try out a car free for a month”. The beneficiary of the campaign is nordic-car-testing.com, a “survey” carried out by Orville Media ApS, a Danish advertising agency with a poor reputation – googling them produces a number of hits to Finnish forum discussions where consumers feel they have been cheated by this group and the Consumer Ombudsman and the Digitoday magazine specifically warn against giving this group any information at all. There is even a dedicated page by a Danish person that mentions them.  A particularly nice touch (and proof of “descent into spamdom” is the use of “emails.com” as the apparent address source, sender and reply-to – it’s a parked domain that’s registered to somebody in China and may well never have had any involvement with Lateralus Enterprise.
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Nov
19

Nordic Business Forum 2013: Advertising the conference by spamming

In a recap of their last year’s efforts, Panic Marketing Oy is spamming again to advertise Nordic Business Forum 2013 (also available in English). Their efforts seem to have begun on November 15, 2012.
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Nov
15

Fonecta: Outsourcing spam ops to Ixonos

Possibly following a certain difficulty in sending spam from their own IP address range, Fonecta have entered into a strategic business partnership with Ixonos (a Finnish provider of IT services). Now Fonecta spam is being sent from the Ixonos cloud instead as of mid-September 2012 or so.
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Nov
15

EUWIFO, European Economic Research Institute, Zurich: Spamming Finnish businesses with survey invitations

This has been going on for a long time.  I think I started receiving it in April 2012.  I opted my own biz address out of it during the summer, but I continue to see the same spam in spamtraps.  It was also discussed on a Finnish LinkedIn group.  Some of the spamtraps constitute outdated and erroneous personal information, the processing of which is completely illegal under Section 9, Paragraph 2 of the Personal Data Act. There is no indication of the address source, but certain key facts suggest it might be Bisnode or one of the other more international players who deal in Finnish leads.
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Nov
14

Hengitysliitto (Breathing Association): Soliciting contributions by spamming

It looks like Bisnode has a campaign of “helping” non-profits out by spamming on their behalf.  This, too, was sent to an address scraped from the web page of the biz. Hengitysliitto is the Finnish Breathing Association, a non-profit dedicated to helping people suffering from breathing disorders.  The message doesn’t even attempt to indicate the address source.  Let’s see what Apsis has to say about this one.

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Nov
14

Regus Finland Oy / Regus Group: Selling temp office facilities by spamming

Regus Finland Oy, my old friend (see previous posts 1, 2, 3, 4) are spamming to sell their temp office facilities. As with the other post today, I saw this in an address harvested from the web page of the biz, and have seen it in spamtraps as well. The ESP is the French Edatis, an acquaintance of mine from a very, very long time ago in this sordid context.

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Nov
14

Pelastusarmeija (Salvation Army Finland): Soliciting contributions by spamming

Pelastusarmeija, aka the Finnish branch of the Salvation Army, is spamming businesses to solicit contributions. The partner in spam is Bisnode/Soliditet, an operation that specialises in the generation and sale of leads, and who are apparently a customer of Apsis, a Swedish ESP who at least in private conversations proffer a policy of disallowing the use of purchased lists. (Guys, if you read this, posting a link on your website to your Acceptable Use Policy would not be a stupid move, and commenting here would be welcome.)

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Nov
09

Lateralus Enterprise / Tavoite Media: Illegally disrespecting opt-out and spamming to sell magazine subscriptions

This was sent to my business address, the use of which I’ve forbidden from the sender no later than September 19, 2011.  This is a repeat of a spam sent on September 28. It says “You have received this offer because you have subscribed to our newsletter.” Well surprise surprise, the biz didn’t.  The domain name mentioned for complaints is expired and leads nowhere, so you can’t actually write to “them”, and you can’t view the URL that supposedly contains the address source, because the domain is parked.
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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.

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Sep
19

Bisnesrekisteri.fi / Lateralus Enterprise / Tavoite Media: Deliberately violating opt-out, deliberately processing outdated and erroneous personal information

No need for copy of any kind, as the message is the same as yesterday. Only the target address matters here, and that’s trivial to deduce. Headers below, anyway.

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