sep 15 2004

unsolicited bulk email

my colleagues and i received some shifty unsolicted bulk email last week. the dodgy people went to our website and grabbed our details from there and then sent an email to each of us requesting some more information.

it pissed me off so much i did some research.

i found that the email wasn't even sent from the companies that are mentioned in the email, Interactive Direct and Decision Makers (dot coza). it was infact sent from another company called analogue dot coza. salama at analogue dot coza to be exact. i have no doubt that this person doesn't even exist!

what i did find interesting was that my favourite web hosting company (webonline) hosts analogue dot coza. so i sent a mail to them (accounts) and the ispa.

updated 13 oct 2004
on friday stewart from webonline got back to me and told me that they have received other complaints and are following it up, can i please send him the original email? sure. wow, i didn't really expect to hear much from anybody.

i feel like this is unresolved... i have a list of names of the people that own all the domains i mentioned, plus their contact details (address, phone and email). i don't know what to do with all this info though? anybody have any ideas?

Posted by sarah | tech, ranting, web

comments

sarah | 2004-10-13 15:26:14
i mailed Stewart back as soon as he let me know that he had replied to me via my website, which i thought was very uncool, but anyway here is a shortened version:

a) You did not make it clear that you work at webonline. Apologies for the
mistake. Below is the full email you sent to me, no mention of who you work for (I copied and pasted his message to me and there was no mention of webonline.)

note: I really should've checked. I guess instead of assuming that it definitely wasn't webonline because of past bad experiences with them?

b) I did send you the original message. I had deleted the one sent to me,
but I did get a colleague to send me a screen grab of his message, with
message headers from the message source (we all received the same message,
except for difference in name). I have reattached and am sending this
screengrab again, along with the colleagues email (fowarded to me and
missing the incriminating message header source linking it to
analogue dot coza).

my only hope after this latest exchange is that webonline does infact contact their client and let them know that it will not tolerate / promote the sending of unsolicted bulk email from their servers.

check out the IPSA code of conduct. points 7 and 8 specifically...
Stewart | 2004-09-30 18:14:02
Once again you have failed to reflect all the facts correctly on your site.
a. I work for WebONLINE and NOT ISPA! Have a look at the headers of the email I sent you.
b. You failed to provide the original email when we asked for it, making it impossible for us to take further action.

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