Spam

More on the T-Mobile Spam Saga

| Richard

If you recall, I was a little miffed at receiving spam from T-Mobile. Looks like I’m not the only one and The Register decided to do some digging themselves.

See the full story here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/01/t_mobile_spam/

There are one or two belters that I’m quoting here from that article:

“So, just to recap, T-Mobile hired Quantum Media who hired Mailtrack Media who hired E-Mail Movers who bought a list from Century Communications who bought it from a bloke on eBay.”

and

“All the companies involved are British-based and signed up to the Direct Marketing Association, as well as being responsible to the Information Commissioner’s Office. In light of our complaint, E-Mail Movers has lodged a complaint with the Information Commissioner who will investigate the procedures used by Century Communications.”

Now, we all know that the Direct Marketing Association are, by definition, the sort of people you wouldn’t piss on if they were on fire, but I love the way that Emailmovers have lodged a complaint! It was their fault in the first place (and Mailtrack Media before that and Quantum Media before that and, of course, not forgetting T-Mobile themselves who decided to breach a Statutory Instrument).

Well done T-Mobile!

Feedback Form, Trackback and Comment Spam

| Richard

You know, it never ceases to amaze me at just how stupid spammers are and, unfortunately, how stupid those gullible idiots who allow themselves to be caught out by a combination of greed and stupidity are.

Why are spammers stupid?

Well they know that there are those gullible idiots who are keen to hand over money to Nigerian 419 scammers and the like and how they’ll click on those phishing links, especially when there’s a $ reward survey supposedly there to be had, or to sign up to MLM programs especially those that proclaim they’re not MLM deals when they clearly are. So they take the broad-brush, scatter-gun approach to sending out junk e-mails.

That must work even with a very low number of clicks per million as it’s so cheap to send out Spam.

But they’ve moved on to getting their websites some coverage. And the way they found to do this was to spam blog comments and trackbacks as well as filling in and submitting feedback or guestbook forms.

The trouble is, anyone with half a brain either junks or disallows all trackbacks or else they use the features of their blogging software to require authentication or moderation so that those Spam attempts go nowhere. Liskewise, feedback forms: they’re going to come back to people like me who’ll just junk the link spam ones without reading them.

And the best bit is that is probably costing these fuckwith spammers money to get these forms filled in, either manually or by bots. Excellent!

Maybe T-Mobile Are Learning?

| Richard

Following the T-Mobile/DBS Datamarketing saga comes a reply:

“…You’re quite right Mr Morris, we do choose these companies to send out our marketing material. We take all the necessary steps to make sure that these companies are reputable and without feedback from people like yourself, we’d be unaware that there was any problems.

“Please be assured that your complaint will be kept on file and we’ll use this information to improve our service…”

Have they learned anything? We’ll see…

Toyota Spamming with DBS

| Richard

So you know all that stuff with T-Mobile?

Well I recently (Wednesday 17th) received this e-mail from DBS data marketing (or are they DBS Datamarketing Limited – seems they can’t even decide on what their company name is):

“Thank you for your email. Your email address originates from  Business Flight Search (http://www.businessflightsearch.com/ ) with an opt in date of 09/12/03.

“I can confirm that your email address has now been permanently removed from our system.”

Never heard of them. Never used them. Never opted-in. A lie.

So when DBS data whatever say “permanently removed”, how long would you think that would mean? Permanently? Forever? No. Two days!

This time, it’s Toyota GB spamming me: “Your details were obtained from DBS Datamarketing Limited…” and they used spammer eCircle AG to send their shite to me.

Dingles Toyota (Norwich) whose name appears in the e-mail haven’t telephoned me back about this. I have also made a formal complaint to Toyota GB as by sending me this spam, they are in breach of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 as enacted by Statutory Instrument 2003 No. 2426 – in other words, Toyota GB has broken the law and can be sued for damages by me and is liable to action by the Information Commissioner.

T-Mobile: “Spam not our fault”…

| Richard

I’ve been having some “issues” with being spammed by T-Mobile and have complained to them. Their latest reply is a belter!

It started in December (18 December 2006), when they used a regular spammer called DBS data marketing to send out a mailshot to an e-mail address of mine that has only ever been used to register some domain names. That bit’s important…

So when I complained to T-Mobile, they contacted the Spammer who informed me that:

“Your email was supplied to us from Consumerbase and your opt in date was 2nd November 2004.”

Now Consumerbase have an “opt-out” policy, which means if they buy your e-mail address from someone or maybe harvest it themselves – who knows? – when they spam you, you have to click on an opt-out/unsubscribe link or else they add your e-mail address to the lists they sell on to other spammers like DBS data marketing. And as we all know, children, the more unscrupulous spammers merely treat such clicks as confirmation that the address is a live one. And as I mentioned earlier, that e-mail address was only ever used to register some domain names.

On 4 January 2007, T-Mobile wrote to me, stating:

“Your details were provided by DBS Marketing, which means that you’d have opted in to receive marketing from them. We would not send marketing advertisements otherwise, as this would be illegal.”

Red rag to a bull. I’ve been online since 1993/94 and know enough about spam to know there is no way I would ever opt-in to receive junk e-mails. Especially when the e-mail address to which it was sent is not a regular e-mail account, remember…

So I replied:

“I’m sorry, but for you to state so categorically that “[I’d] have opted in to receive marketing from them” is complete and utter nonsense and is merely repeating a lie you may have been told by them. As I already explained, the e-mail address your Spam was sent to has only ever been used to register some domain names with a company that is in no way related to that firm of known Spammers you chose, DBS. As you correctly note, sending out “marketing advertisements otherwise, …would be illegal” and indeed is.”

I received a reply on 9 January 2007 from them:

“Your details were provided by DBS Marketing. If you feel that they’ve incorrectly advised us that you opted in to receive marketing information then you’ll need to contact them directly to discuss this.

I do appreciate you letting us know your views Mr Morris. It’s important to us as it allows us to improve what we do. I’ve passed your comments on to our marketing department so that they can take these into consideration when choosing the companies that we deal with.”

A pity then that I had received another spam to the same address earlier that day from T-Mobile, this time via another well-known spammer, Emailmovers.

I replied to T-Mobile later that same day:

“Clearly your marketing department is not in the slightest bit fussy which Spammers they use: your company has again sent me Spam today (13:40) using a different firm of Spammers. The e-mail you sent is titled “Exclusive Offers and great phone deals with T-mobile” and this time your company used Emailmovers.
 
I would be very interested to find out from you what lame excuse you intend to use this time…”

And yes, verily it was a very lame excuse:

“I can confirm Mr Morris that our marketing department have removed your details from our mailing lists.

Any complaint that you wish to make about receiving unwanted marketing information should be addressed to the company that sent them. In this case I understand it was from Emailmovers. The emails are sent by them and not us. We just supply the email content.”

So it’s not T-Mobile’s fault that they use any old bunch of spammers to send out spam e-mails rather than relying on their own, proper, opt-in lists. Oh and apparently T-Mobile aren’t the company sending out T-Mobile mailshots. That explains that then…

I’ve suggested that the person I’ve been e-mailing at T-Mobile “needs more training”. That translates as “is a stupid twat”.