“Riikka Mäkelä”, which appears to be a fake identity set up by Tavoite Media, a d/b/a of Lateralus Enterprise, recently offered us the following spam. This isn’t even mainsleaze, it’s pure and unadulterated spam, but it was sent to addresses commonly used for mainsleaze (that is, Finnish B2B addresses). There was reason enough for more than a suspicion about the sender’s true identity, and the following post confirmed it.
According to a change on November 1, 2012 to its information in the Finnish Business Information System, Lateralus Enterprise is now resident at Valliniemenkatu 6 F 59, 48900 KOTKA. This 30 m² property was recently for rent. The ownership of the telephone number 040-594 0756 indicates the corresponding change, although Fonecta Finder hasn’t noticed yet that Lateralus Enterprise would have moved from Sokinsuontie 7 A 22, 02760 ESPOO. Even Tavoite Media‘s own web pages still display the old address. What’s more, it indicates another person as definitely having to do with Tavoite Media. So he’s not just a misguided customer, but an actual partner in spam. Thanks for confirming, dudes. BTW. If you list a portfolio of customers and three of the eleven are you yourselves, isn’t that kind of sad? (Getwin Oy, BisnesRekisteri.com, and Trendikauppa.fi.)
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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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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Lateralus Enterprise / Tavoite Media is spamming again, this time to advertise its own search engine optimization services.
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.
Ouch. Ouch!!!! How many ways can you fail?
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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.
More spam just in from the spammer at Lateralus Enterprise / Tavoite Media advertising the spam registers for sale at bisnesrekisteri.fi. Now the mails contain a disclaimer to say “This is an advertisement meant for companies that does not require prior consent according to law.” Well, it’s still spam, and it gets listed and otherwise treated as spam nonetheless.
The Data Protection Ombudsman doesn’t want me to say his name out loud, but surely I can continue to state that bisnesrekisteri.fi, which is owned by Lateralus Enterprise, is again involved in spam.
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