16 posts tagged “email”

If you had an extra day each month—that no one else had—how would you spend it?

This might be lame, but: catching up on emails. When you get 2,000 to 3,000 emails a week (the Fairfax Press indicates that Mayor Prendergast only gets 1,400), and don’t trust a PA enough to write back in the Hart’s Rules style, an extra miracle day would be awesome.

Blogging got Ziff–Davis’s attention in 2007. Maybe it will again. Today, I wrote the following email to the company, quoting the bottom of one of their newsletters first.

At 09.00 AM 2009.2.11, you wrote:

If you have already registered for this eSeminar, please ignore this message. If you have problems with your registration, please e-mail: eSeminars@ziffdavisenterprise.com

You are receiving this eSeminars update because you provided your email address to Ziff Davis Enterprise.
If you no longer wish to receive updates from Ziff Davis Enterprise eSeminars, unsubscribe here.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

You are right, I once did provide my email address to Ziff–Davis. In the 1990s. At the time, Heather Locklear was hot, Chrysler was profitable, and no one had heard of Monica Lewinsky.
   This century, I removed my subscriptions to all Ziff–Davis newsletters, because I was sick of receiving some I had never subscribed to.
   ZD once had a page where all its newsletters were listed, with a check option beside each one. I unchecked them all.
   For a while, the emails stopped. They then began again without warning. I went to your removal page and noted that nothing was checked.
   CIO began spamming me in July 2005 with a ‘complimentary subscription’. Baseline spam started in December 2006. Eweek began in March 2007. Ziff–Davis event emails began in March 2007 as well.
   One of your staff, Mary Hart, went through a lengthy process with me to get my name off every ZD mailing list and those of your contractors after I publicized by unhappiness with your spamming in March 2007. Beginning around March 22 that year, she checked one list, and I was not on it. Then another spam came. She checked another list. Eventually, after going through this over a few months, she assured me that there was no way I would wind up on another mailing list from your company.
   I believe I was spam-free as far as ZD was concerned in 2008.
   I am disappointed that your spam has restarted in 2009. I cannot believe I have spent so many years with this problem—even though I removed myself in the first half of this decade.
   I must insist that you no longer spam me. I have followed your removal instructions—but long experience tells me that that is useless without human intervention.

Sincerely,

Jack Yan

Silly me, following instructions again.
   We have usually filed complaints under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the US with a printed letter or fax, but when we went to Hostgator’s site, we noticed that they suggested email. ‘To file a copyright infringement claim, please email abuse@hostgator.com after following the steps below in an email’, reads their page.

   The email response:

HostGator requires DMCA notices to be filed via fax or letter. The complaint must include full contact information in the complaint (including phone number). We will call and verify. Email (unless digitally signed by a verified and trusted third party) is not an acceptable medium for legal complaints.  This ticket system has received what appears to be a possible DMCA complaint, but one or more of the following are missing: (a) the complaint does not contain sufficient information (b) the format of the complaint is inconsistent with the requirements of the DMCA (c) the complaint has been submitted via email without proper authentication (d) full contact information is missing. We will need you to re-submit your claim, using the proper format, including sufficient detai, via postal mail or fax. Instructions on how to do so follow.

   No biggie: I just copied and pasted the contents of the email on to a fax sheet and printed it off, but I thought it was funny that I would never have written the DMCA complaint in an email if they didn’t ask for it. And my email did contain all the information, but you can’t trust a computer to do your reading for you in 2009.
   I just hope my fax doesn’t get sent back telling me to put it in the snail mail now!

PS.: I might have had a bit of fun at Hostgator’s expense, but I have to hand it to them: they acted within hours and removed the infringer’s website. Well done.

I like being a bit of a Luddite when it comes to things like email programs. I have used Eudora 4 since the 1990s, and my particular 4.3.2.7 version since 2000. And why not? It works and I don’t need the flashest. Also, I have been immune from the viruses that have plagued newer email programs. That always made me feel pretty smug. The old stuff was more reliable.

   But, it appears, its time is up. There are SMTP authentication issues with the old version 4s with our new server, and I am looking at getting something newer. I tried Thunderbird just now but it looks too much like Outlook, a program which I find unusable. It’s going to be Eudora again, probably an older one such as v. 6.2.5.
   Bye, bye, Eudora 4: you have served me well for a decade.

The internet can be dangerous for translation:

dearjanesample.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/reasons-why-you-should-use-a-real-translator/
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7702913.stm

As you can see, I might be a bit busy with emails.

I wish this was retouched, but it isn’t. Thanks to your friendly neighbourhood spammers, I have 35,200 emails.
   The price of being popular.

Shame on the following companies today:

Panda Security, for spamming the Medinge Group. While there is always a possibility that forged headers led to our address being subscribed, there was never any confirmation from us, plus I’ve since used all their unsubscribe methods in their spams, and have even written to the company using its feedback form. This is sad for a company that supposedly is looking after home computer security.

Tech2.com: never subscribed, yet the target of spamming for a year at least. We have Tech2.com’s IP addresses manually entered into our server, which means we get a tiny header notification in our trash—signalling that they are still coming. Again, a company that should know better.

   Have other Voxers ever been surprised at who spams, given what their corporate missions are?

I’ve had to turn off email notifications from Vox yesterday and I want to publicly say this is not due to anyone in my neighbourhood.
   As you’ll read at Zen Ken’s Vox blog, a musician called Matt Springfield spammed us yesterday.
   Mr Springfield has a lot of us in his neighbourhood and sent a Vox notification to us six times. While the repetition was accidental, it did highlight for me that Vox has a security problem. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have the person in your neighbourhood—if the other person has you in there, they can send these notifications to you.
   If you read the comments at Mr Springfield’s latest post, there are unhappy people, and the first commenter, Susan, who is one of my neighbours, suggests this is not the first time he has engaged in spamming.
   I gave him some advice that he should send to only those people who have requested his messages, not everyone he has in his neighbourhood (and there are a lot).
   I have also written to Vox. There are people I want to hear from (e.g. Twana) but Vox switches off email notifications of each type completely. I think we should be able to hear from people we have in our own neighbourhoods or block individual members such as Mr Springfield.

You know how spammers regularly put a fake name next to your email address that’s somehow compiled from their database?
   It’s been a wonderful filtering tool because somewhere along the line, one spammer decided my name is Newton Singewald. Evidently that spammer had sold on that list with the alias intact, so I now receive emails addressed to Newton. Bingo—the name is in my filters now.
   How very cooperative!
   As Christians know, Newt was one of the first five disciples: Matthew, Mark, Olivia, Newt and John.