Spammers are a disease of the internet. They will get their reward soon enough…

I have received emails from the recipients of this spoof email that used my email address and included the full content of one of my newsletters as distributed through aweber (so the spammer subscribed to my list to get it and then unsubscribed when they were done).

The spammer pasted their ad in the bottom of the spam email after my newsletter and changed the subject line of the email. In return I’ve had emails from the recipients using the F word, the B word and a lot of other offensive words. They’ve reported me and my domain as spam, etc. I’m still cleaning up the damage (and hoping none of these unhappy people come to visit me in person one day). The spammer pasted an ad about weight loss and apparently this is a very touchy personal subject with people who receive such ads.

Fax spam – we waste more paper on fax spam than we use for real faxes.

SMS spam. I have to pay for messages to my phone. Plus, the annoying beep that should only be something from someone I know. I now have the service blocked completely so now I cannot use it even if I want to.

Email spam does not seem so bad – still don’t like it.

James

Charges for sending e-mails is quite tempting, I wonder how would everyone else react to it?

Fraud and theft is unfortunately a part of doing business. I’m currently working with a company that had to change its main bank account twice last year due to excessive fraud. Heck, in accounting, we even have a “kinder” word for it…shrinkage (like that’s fooling anyone).

Spam…well…spam, like direct mail and telemarketing, works. The biggest issue with spam is that its so blasted inexpensive to use. You want to limit spam? Put a cost on sending emails.

Sending cyber hugs your way Darren and great job on using your experience to bring attention to the subject.

For more info about SPF records google it or see http://www.openspf.org

It’s a shame that this hasn’t been solved yet, why not just make a seperate website for your newsletter then get people to subscribe to that instead? (I know, some folks don’t use RSS yet.)

1. shop them to the authorities: if you are in the same jurisdiction and have competent e-fraud police, then this is worthwhile and most other businesses will thank you for it – if they are distant, it’s probably difficult, but maybe you can feed their telephone numbers and mailing addresses to their local authorities.

2. name and shame them: particularly if you have a high search engine placement or relevant audience, you can make their misdeeds widely known. However, be careful to check it was really them. I’ve once seen people dirtying rivals’ names by impersonation-spamming, but I think it’s pretty rare.

The problem is not technology (authenticated email, sender verification, SPF, Sender-ID, or any other FUSSP) but legality: fraud and advertising criminal codes.

Any more?

Why the anger? I think that we feel it is an invasion of our privacy, of our personal space and in that respect, people who get livid about spam are the same personality types (like me) who get “the rage” when they are cut up in traffic or made to wait in queues… GRRRR…!

Just letting you know the owners of SPAM (the tinned meat) have no objection to spam (junk email) being called “spam”, but they ask that it be no likened to SPAM (the tinned meat) through the use of their logos or images of their products in discussion of spam.

Of course they’re fighting a losing battle, but in principles it’s not an unreasonable request.

Interesting that the topic of Spam came up – the SEC just halted trading on 35 Companies because of their extremely aggressive Spam emails

and tonight 20 -20 just did an 23 minute interview with a Successful Nigerian Scam Artist who came clean and revealed secrets after being exposed in a sting operation

First and foremost, they should use free email addresses to sign up for newsletters and the like to begin with. I could care less who spams my throw away accounts.