29 posts tagged “spam”

It’s nearly eight months since I started the Cars’ group here on Vox. We are now seven members shy of 100, the group is vibrant and spam-free, and I want to thank all members for making it a great place to be.
   We have had spammers come in, but I have been quite active in deleting the obvious ones before they caused any trouble. One or two have got through, and were deleted after they sneaked in one spam post.
   To see how badly things could have got, I visited the old Cars Rock! group today. It still looks like no one is managing it, despite my suggesting to the group creators that I would be happy to help. There are a few legit posts there, but since mid-2009, spammers pretty much control the place, right down to multiple Russian porn posts.
   No problems with that here. We have great posts from all over the world—Japan, the US, Australia and New Zealand most often—and it’s exactly what I hoped the group would become. Thank you.

First Twitter died for nearly two days. Facebook has been progressively dying, first removing its navigation bars, then its logo, then making false accusations, and now removing all the contents of my home page. And today, I see Vox has begun recommending splogs on my blog:

   I have reported many of these and tonight, I am just too tired to. Hopefully someone else can take up the baton for the time being. Vox is pretty good at dealing to these.

Some more oddities I have found on the web today, both relating to Google.
   Ever hear of people wanting you to give 110 per cent? Google’s Blogger service sure tries hard:

In a republish yesterday, Blogger reported that it was giving 103 per cent.
   Here’s one from just a few moments ago. Selling Cialis? Google News now picks that up: See the second and fourth entries. I found a third one there as well.
   And remember the PHP error I noted at the end of June? It turns out I am not alone with Firefox refusing to open a page and prompting me to save it instead, as I finally found this complaint today. However, unlike the complainant I was unable to solve it and the error is not on the servers I visited. As he was using Ubuntu, and I am using Windows, we can probably conclude that the error is Firefox’s alone, and sporadic as well.

Props to Robin, Timothy, Matsu, Takeratta, Neil and everyone else for making the Cars’ group on Vox the biggest, most active and most fun on the automotive topic here on Vox.
   While the old Cars Rock! group also has 51 members (a number which we hit today), it’s unmoderated and a great deal of its newer members are bots and sploggers. (In fact, its latest one is called Splogger!) I am glad to say that of our 51, there appears to be a human being behind the account, and I have kept an eye on it to make sure it remains spam- and bot-free.
   We took a mere two and a half months to become the biggest, and I frequent it often to see the various models and stories that have fascinated each one of us.
   I’m really grateful to you all for joining and hope you get as much out of it as I do. And when I get that Bluetooth dongle for my laptop, you can see the pics I took tonight of the new BMW Z4 and F01 7-series at their Wellington launch.

Continuing the silly email season, I mentioned this one today at the Vista Group luncheon (with original paragraphing), offering to buy the jya.net domain. Until the one accusing me of discriminating against gays (!), this was going to be the funniest one of the last week of February. I’ll still blog it since I told Jim and Mark I would:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am an independent contractor working on behalf of a variety of companies, and individuals across the world.
I work in a variety of online industries including (albeit not limited to) web design, development, and hosting.

I have been tasked with contacting, and negotiating on behalf of an individual in relation to the domain name jya.net.
A quick ‘Whois’ look up provided this address as a contact for the domains ownership, hence why you have received this.

In this particular case, the individual on whose behalf I am working is developing a network of information based websites.
The intention is that development will provide a variety of useful information that many many Internet users are looking for on a daily basis.
It is hoped that good rankings in search engines, and natural interest in the subject matter will allow such a network to be successful, and profitable.
A vital aspect of such a development is the domain names around which the various websites are branded. A website about cats is clearly more suited to the ‘cat.com’ domain than ‘stevethepussycat.com’. Numerous people looking for information on cats would type in cat.com, and thus a good domain is a sure fire way of reaching your target audience.

On the basis of the above, down to business.. We would be very interest in obtaining the domain name should it be obtainable for the offer price of 300(USD).

The whois database is not particularly informative, but I hasten to add that for any individual, or a company, such a cash injection during such a tough economic period is always helpful. Perhaps the sum of the above will make a sale a viable possibility for you.

I thank you for your time, and politely request a response in a timely manner.
Many Thanks

It is probably spam, and I opted not to reply. The sender included his name, more than I can say for the previous one blogged here.
   We get a lot of these but this is probably the second or third one with an offer price.
   I’m sure you can already see a few problems with this email, which is probably automated.
   For a start, how can there be a ‘natural interest in the subject matter’ of jya? What is a jya, anyway? I know why these three letters exist (Jack Yan & Associates) but why would anyone else be searching for them?
   Now, the price. The princely sum of $300, and how it could help us during tough times.
   Reprinting stationery for an international company: $4,000 for a minimum order. Changing addresses on the server for affected team members, probably not that cheap. Losing goodwill associated with the domain name: priceless.
   Getting $300 for the domain would be the worst deal ever.
   This is what suggested to me that it was spam. If the writer had even visited the site, he would have realized what was at stake.
   I was going to write back with some of the above, then I thought: I am not interested in commencing a dialogue with a spammer. Plus earlier requests, when I did write back, were never acknowledged.

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

It’ll be time to leave Vodafone at the end of our contract, but I have heard way too many stories about the company stinging people, whether rightly or wrongly, for early termination. I felt we had to inform them with the below to prevent them taking this step when we change to TelstraClear. I hate having to be on guard like this, but what choice do I have after three lousy years with them?

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I never heard back on my complaint of September 22, 2008 below, part of an ongoing series of gaffes with Vodafone.
   I believe this is the final full month for our company’s contract with your company, as arranged via Digital Mobile.
   As you can imagine, after a very unhappy three-year term with Vodafone, you will be losing our company as a customer at the end of the period.
   The three-year period has included “accidental” over-charging, unsolicited text advertising from you, charging for Blackberry services that we informed your company we would not need, and other hiccups that happen with too great a frequency for me to believe they were not part of your policies. On conversations with other business owners I have learned we are not alone.
   We will be switching to Telstra Clear upon expiry.
   Telstra Clear has given me conflicting messages, however, about the change. They are quite clear that we will retain our numbers, which we would like.
   The conflict comes with the timing of the change. One rep has informed me that he needs to begin the porting of our numbers  two weeks prior to the contract’s expiry. The other has said that it is to happen after expiry.
   Please consider this email notice that we will not be terminating our contract with you early. We will allow it to run to its full term.
   However, if the first rep is right, Vodafone may receive some notice of an impending change prior to expiry when we begin the switch to Telstra Clear. This is not to be taken as notice of early termination.

Yours faithfully,

Jack Yan
Lucire Ltd.

Do you think the Vox splog problem has been solved or am I speaking too soon? None in ‘Recent posts’ and ‘Explore Vox’ just now.

Looks like there are new IP addresses that the sploggers are exploiting Vox from. If you go to ‘Explore Vox’, you will probably find that splogs, again, outnumber legitimate posts by a substantial amount. I have suggested to Vox that surely a CAPTCHA method could prevent this. The latest report (not in text, as it will be linked) that I just sent was this—and this is just from a single page of featured posts on Vox:

   And in ‘Recent posts’ they have totally taken over: PS.: I worked out from ‘Explore Vox’ that splog posts are entering the system at a rate of around 50 per minute.

I believe I am right when I say that the sending of junk faxes is illegal in New Zealand.
   Living HQ, you have been publicly dissed for sending me one through your FaxAd contractor. Here’s hoping this post comes up in Google for people searching on whether they should deal with this company.

Postscript, October 13: it turns out Living HQ is run by a friend of mine! I’ve known him for nearly 20 years, and obviously had lost touch enough to not know this was his business.
   The last business we did together must have been 15 years ago and it was in another field.
   He informs me that to the best of his knowledge, junk faxes are legal, but opted to contact me privately than reply on this blog, which of course is his choice.
   I am not so sure as my number is unlisted at Telecom (as in: only the 111 operator can see this number on their computer, and it does not show up on caller IDs or in phone books). As I told him, ‘I spoke with Telecom a year and a bit ago and they informed me that junk faxes are illegal and are treated as nuisance calls. In fact, they told me to note down the senders and what times the faxes came and they would take action against the sender if it reached a certain quantity (I think three or four). It’s just unfortunate I targeted someone I knew out of all the people I get this stuff from.’
   I went on to explain there might be privacy implications.
   ‘I have to say that junk faxes are bloody annoying though, because it’s my paper, and if you get dozens of them from different outfits then I don’t want to see them, unless it is someone I have OKed in advance. In fact, I don’t know of anyone who appreciates them and I personally think they do more harm to a business than good. Just my opinion.’
   So on the legality aspect, either my friend, and his contractor, are wrong, or Telecom New Zealand is wrong. But we can conclude that Living HQ is operating under the assumption that junk faxes are legal and that this should not be an impediment to people wishing to deal with the company. More to come. Hopefully my friend can point out a bit more about the fax marketers he’s likely paid good money to and how they got an unlisted number, but since I know him I can say with some certainty he has not acted improperly based on what he knows.