More Spammers Get The Smackdown

Here's another tasty bit of internet justice. Hot off the presses from ComputerWorld.com, a couple just got hammered with a... (dramatic pause) ...$256 MILLION fine for inundating people with junk email.

"Henry Perez and his wife Suzanne Bartok were ordered to pay the damages -- amounting to US$10 per bulk e-mail -- following a four-year court case in which the judge found that they had bombarded CIS Internet Services of Clinton, Iowa, over a four-month period in 2003."

It's probably a safe bet that CIS will never see any of that money but it feels good to hear about spammers getting what they deserve. Evidently, CIS was getting hit so hard, the massive amount of emails they received ate away at their bandwidth. So much so, that they ended up loosing about 3800 customers in 3 years even after buying dedicated servers to keep the spam at bay.

ComputerWorld reports that "...CIS has filed suit against many spammers and so far it has received about 10 judgments in its favor, Kramer said. Collecting the money has proven to be difficult, however. Many of the spammers have gone out of business, moved their money overseas or simply hidden from sight..." At least they can't do business as normal or as easy as they once did.

I always wondered how Hormel feels about "Spam" being used in such a derrogatory manner. I would think it kind of puts a damper on the marketing of such a fine product.

 

Using Non Domain Based Emails For Business

Here's my opinion. You want to hear it because I know everything, right? Not really, but I do have some strong feelings on this subject. Very similar to my feelings on printing your own business cards on the perforated Avery stock and using an ink jet printer.

IF you have a business, AND you have a website and your own domain, you should NOT be using a Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL or other free email service. I don't care if you have had your email address, mycoolcamaro49@hotmail.com for 15 years, DON'T use it when corresponding professionally with clients. This chips away at your legitimacy. Take an extra 10 minutes and set up an email address through your control panel or have your hosting company do it for you if you don't know how.

All I know is that if you send me an email from sirpimpsalot@aol.com and expect me to buy something from your company, you have already lost my business. (unless of course you are selling pimp hats.)

So tell me what do YOU think on the subject.

 

The Valentines Day Virus

Here's a little bit of info that I picked up via WebProNews and I thought that I would pass along.

"In an email to WebProNews, a Kaspersky Lab spokesperson wrote, "Kaspersky Lab has detected a large-scale, global mass mailing of Valentine's Day spam. The spam was first identified by Kaspersky Lab on the morning of February 12, and as of the morning of February 13, the number of spam messages of this type have still not decreased. The message currently accounts for about 5% of all mail traffic checked by Kaspersky Hosted Security Services."

The problem is pretty big, in other words, and going into the 14th, is only likely to become worse.

We don't have any special malware-beating tips to share; just try to be a little more careful than usual. That special someone isn't going to love it if you turn your computer into a big doorstop."

Just make sure you know who it's coming from and above all make sure you are not opening any .exe files. Oh yeah, and wait till next month to buy roses.

Have a safe and happy Valentines Day!

 

"What I Found In My Email" Mondays. Vol.2 - Issue 4

Here we are in our post Super Bowl haze - woops, I almost forgot you can't use that. You have to say "Big Game". I am probably going to get sued now. Anyway, what did everyone think of the commercials. Thumbs down for me. This year, I thought that the game was better than the commercials. Normally, it's the other way around. Actually, the game was one of the biggest upsets since the 70's I believe. As far as commercials go, I still haven't seen anything that will top the Terry Tate Office Linebacker commercials from several years back.

But here we are, trudging ahead trying to make sense of the world around us. But wait! All hope is not lost. It's MONDAY, and you know what that means. That's right, it's time for another edition of "what I found in my email" Mondays.

After having watched this, I almost want to say the famous line from Caddyshack..."cannonbaaallll, cannon ball comin..."

For those of you who have grown up with the "sprinkling" type baptisms this may not be as funny. And for those of you who do the dunk, this is really funny.




Have a great week everyone.

 

" What I Found In My Email" Mondays. Vol.1 - Issue 10

In the interest in keeping with tradition and the fact that these seem to be the most read posts from stumblers, here is the latest edition of, "What I found in my email" Mondays.

I received this today from my Dad. The email was entitled, "Engineering Question.
The question was posed about how much a house weighs. The answer; evidently more than a rural, 2 lane bridge can hold. Here are the pictures.








It's my guess that someone is going to owe someone else a new house. I wonder if they dishes are OK?

Well, that's it for this Monday. OH, and make sure you enter the contest for the iPod. The post says we are celebrating 15,000 unique visitors for the month, but so far we have surpassed 20,000 as of today and it's all because of you.

With the sincerest heart, I would like to thank all of you for stopping by The Big Bald Blog. Merry Christmas to you and yours and may this holiday season be filled with warmth and laughter, the things memories are made with.

With warmest regards,

Andy

 

Google Is Reading Your Gmail?!

I was perusing Webpronews website this morning and read a article by Doug Caverly called, "Microsoft CEO Says Google Reads Your Mail."

The article says that Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, accused Google of reading email that is housed in their Gmail system. Why would he make this accusation? Maybe he was playing some dirty pool to promote their Windows Live Hotmail system especially after the fact the that they had just re-done the monetization.

Looking a little deeper the article on Webpronews references a write up on CRN.com by Ed Moltzen. This article says that, "...Google reads customer email as part of a failed bid to drive ad-based revenue. Ballmer isn't the first to fire salvos at Google's Gmail privacy policy. Privacy advocates have been critical over the policy almost since the beginning, but the popularity of the service has skyrocketed nonetheless."

To date, the big G has not come forward to defend themselves against these accusations. Google does publicly admit that they "processes personal information" on their servers but they never come out and explicitly say that they are reading your email. They haven't said that they aren't reading your email either.

So what do you do? Just like any other email system, whether its a free service or a hosted email service, don't send anything that would need to be kept private or secure. I am not real convinced that if you are exchanging recipes via email with a buddy, Google will step up and start spamming you with Pampered Chef and recipe oriented direct emails.

This whole thing is interesting nonetheless.

What say you?

 

Old School Wins The Mail Battle...For Now

For all of you still wondering if snail mail or e-mail is more effective, there is a new study published by ICR.

Granted, it was conducted by the red inkers at Pitney Bowes and I am assuming that there may be a little bit of a skew in the numbers, but the numbers clearly indicate that consumers prefer TRADITIONAL direct mail over direct email.

The study found that an overwhelming 73% still preferred receiving unsolicited information about products and company services in "snail-mail" format. The number jumps to 86% when asked if about confidential information like banking statements and financial reports.

Here is one statistic reported that makes me think that the numbers are a bit skewed. When asked about disposal of unsolicited mail, 31% of the respondants said that they were less likely to dispose of normal mail. This sort of forces me assume that over 60% (a number conveniently left out) are likely to dispose of the hard mail. However 53% said they were likely to delete an unopened email.

In the end, it appears that U.S. consumers still prefer the "tried and true" traditional mail format. I am sure this may change in the future but when you are contemplating your next mail campaign you might want to stick with what people prefer.

Need help on your next direct mail campaign? Give IMT a call at 319-232-4332

 

The Pentagon Gets Email System Hacked?

CNN Reported Thursday afternoon that the Pentagon confirmed that their email system got hacked. The Pentagon emphasizes that breach occurred on an unclassified system that primarily handles "routine email" involving administrative type email.

Nothing was said about the depth of the attacks or if they even figured out who did it.

As of Thursday, the email service was yet to be fully restored. This recent attack affected about 1500 users of the system.

Wow, to think that this could happen at the pentagon. This must have been a very determined hacker. Kind of makes you wonder how secure thing really are.