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Archive for the 'Spam' Category | back to home

15 September 2003

Simon Bisson has written a handy piece for the Guardian giving an overview of the software available to protect your business’ e-mail and how and why to deploy it.

23 August 2003

At a forum about spam in May, NTT in Japan warned that, “the company’s 38 million customers still receive up to 30 wireless spam messages per day” and American wireless carriers are concerned the US could be next.

“…Federal law prohibits most telemarketers from dialing cell phones, but no such regulations prevent spammers from sending messages to addresses like 2025551212@cellphonecarrier.com. Because many text services carry a per-message charge, costs to consumers could mount quickly.”

Here in Europe cellphone spam does not seem to be too bad so far a) because we have better privacy protection anyway and b) because the sender pays for each message sent instead of the receiver paying to receive so truly bulk spams would be uneconomic.

Do you Nordics have problems with cell spam?

21 August 2003

I was wondering when this issue would start receiving some attention. A recent survey discovered that on average 17 percent of “permission-based” marketing messages are “erroneously” tagged as spam by ISP spam filters and are therefore never seen by their intended recipients. I would imagine that at least some of that is due to large numbers of people tagging email as spam that comes to them because of dubious definitions of “permission” (where companies have passed on details of their addresses to other “partners” for example). It’s noteable that 46 percent of email from “catalogers” (whoever they are?) is bounced on average compared to less than 1% of non-profit email so I expect some of the email bounced arguably deserved to be.

Nonetheless this is a serious problem and may become more so over time if spam volumes continue to rise and more people start to rely increasingly on technical “fixes”. The problem is, of course, that people who really do want to receive some bulk-delivered email – notifications of special offers they requested, for example, or even political communications – will end up missing it and won’t even know it happened. That’s why I believe carefully-phrased legal solutions to spam will in the end be better solutions to the problem than technical “fixes”.

Some suggest spammers (who are mostly in the US – and apparently mostly in Florida) will simply move overseas to avoid regulation but I believe only a hard core will be willing to live with the disruption to their lives and businesses that moving overseas to a country without anti-spam laws would cause. Anyway it has to be worth at least trying to lessen irresponsible bulk emailing using the law.

Thanks to this Techdirt thread for the heads-up

12 August 2003

An MSNBC investigation shows that although big companies themselves may not spam they don’t seem to do much to prevent affiliates from spamming on their behalf and passing the results on as sales leads at $10-20 per respondent.payday companies 6 4 advance loanloan payday 5 free 7loan 500 personal57 loans student6 payday 8 loan 123personal loan 6 easy loan paydaycalifornia officers loan certification 63 3fast pay payday loan 8 day Map

10 August 2003

Here’s a story that makes my teeth grind with frustration – leaked order logs from a spammer selling $50 bottles of penis enlargement pills show around 6,000 people responded to the messages over one month alone. This Wired article goes into detail – some of it eventually tedious but usually grimly fascinating – about the kind of people who do make these purchases. Somehow they even managed to get one of these morons to talk about why – “there was a picture on the top of the page that said, ‘As Seen on TV,’ and I guess that made me think it was legit,” said a San Diego salesman”.

I do worry a bit about the breach of privacy involved in producing the article at all, however…movies japanese lesbianmovie lactatingmovies lesbian pornomovie lesbiansmovie sex lolitamovie adult matrix maturevs movies mature youngmet art moviesmmf movies fuckingmovies mommy

17 July 2003

The easiest way to enable people to email you from a web page is to put some HTML code in – mailto:you@youraddress.com. Unfortunately this is also a good way to make sure spammers get ahold of that address. They send automated search spiders around the Internet looking for anything with an @ sign in it and add it to their databases. Follow the directions on the Email Protector page and you can put your address on a web page using a mailto: link but without giving spammers anything they can see.

One minor caveat – people with old web browsers may have trouble accessing your email that way. Also, this trick won’t protect you if you use your address itself as the link text – just use your name or company name as the link people click on. If you want to display your email address so people can type it into their software themselves or write it down, use “GIF TEXT”:http://www.srehttp.org/apps/gif_text/mkgiftxt.htm which will turn your email address into an image file which they will be able to understand but computers can’t.4mandu nokia ringtoneringtones 22free 5c nextel 22 5cp107 samsung all saints ringtonesalan cherrington exposure indecent11123 pickerington oh lane terrypickerington 11123 ln terry ohphotos accrington arialamateur swingers nevada yerington in Map

15 July 2003

Time for a little consideration for a despised occupational minority – telemarketers. Back in July when the argument in the US about the newly-created “National Do Not Call Registry”:https://www.donotcall.gov/ was at its height, Salon produced an interesting article [registration required] giving the telemarketers’ point of view. Did you know according to the Direct Marketing Association,

“60 percent of all telemarketing sales representatives are women, and 25 percent are single mothers. More than a quarter are students, a third are minorities, and 5 percent are physically disabled. ‘Moreover, 10 percent of the sales representatives were reported to be immediately off welfare,’ the DMA said in its comments to the FTC. ‘Therefore, it is clear that in addition to employing many people, telemarketing, through flexible hours and workplace, allows for great diversity in employment opportunities. Many use telemarketing as a first job opportunity when entering the workforce from school or welfare.'”

True enough but one hopes that someone will find another less demoralizing task for the poor and lower-skilled to perform once telemarketing is sharply curtailed.

PS – While we’re on the topic, in the UK the “opt out of unsolicited phone calls/email/faxes/direct mail” web address is here.

26 June 2003

Howard Rheingold via Smart Mobs alerted me to an unusual case where an SMS operator in India broadcast a request for donors of a rare blood type to give blood to help save the life of a patient in Delhi. It appears to have worked. I wonder if other similar public service messages might start to be officially distributed (this appears to have been done “unofficially” as a favour). It just goes to show that even spam doesn’t always have to be a bad thing…granny oma erolog sex sex nlteen gushing orgasmscartoon pharrell createblack women pussy fattits emma watsonshairy open pussies wideunderage asian picslactating breasts men suckingwives cheating black white cockgay videos suck self

27 May 2003
Filed under:Spam at6:18 pm

Earthlink, the US’ third biggest ISP won $16.4m damages and a permanent injunction against someone who sent 850 million unsolicited e-mails via its service. It’s not the first time either – they won $25m in a similar case last year. Sadly, it’s like stepping on ants trying to get these people wiped out…15000 signature loancash advance washington dc loanloans $40000 student2006 student loan interest deduction taxhome loans accentcash loan ambassadorcredit a loan ok vacation badloan 20-year home equity$400 deposit loancapital disadvantages loan advantages of and

17 May 2003
Filed under:problems with technology,Spam at10:53 pm

whatsthis.jpg

This popped up on my screen this afternoon. And something like it popped up a few months back. I just downloaded and ran AdAware 6 to see if some spyware could be to blame but didn’t find anything.

Later Thanks to the timely intervention of Simon Forrest I found out this problem is due to an obscure feature built into Windows NT, 2000 and XP for network admins to use to warn of network shutdowns and the like, and thanks to “Res the Sorceror” I found out how to fix the problem:

“Go to control panel. Double-click on Administrative Tools select Services, scroll down to Messenger, go to properties, change Auto to Disabled.”

So if this has happened to you that’s how to fix it. Hope this helps!movies squirtnude movie sceneslesbian big movieerotic moviesclips movie hentaistriptease moviesmovies bestialityfree animal movies sex Map

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