FreeLists / arachne / [arachne] Finally!! A target for your anti-spam complaints, a real life target!!

["L.D. Best" <l.d.best@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Berlind/?p=374&tag=nl.e539

March 12th, 2007
Want to gripe at a spammer? Here’s one you can call.
Posted by David Berlind @ 12:35 pm Categories: General, Software 
Infrastructure, Personal Technology, Security
Here's something you don't get everyday: spam with a working phone 
number and a picture of the spammer (see partial screenshot, left). If 
you're fed up with spam and want to complain to someone about it, how 
better to get it off your chest than to tell a spammer — any spammer — 
what you think of spamming practices. After all, wouldn't it make you 
feel better if you had a shot at changing at least one spammer's mind?
Now is your chance.

In fairness to the spammer in this case, spam is one of those e-mail 
classifications where beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Much the 
same way one man's junk is another man's pleasure, what is viewed as 
spam by some is not necessarily viewed as spam by others. Unsolicited 
commercial email (UCE) is considered by many (including me) to be a form 
of spam. UCE is the sort of e-mail where someone or some business that's 
ultimately interested in your money solicits you via e-mail without 
having had a prior business relationship with you (there are 
non-commercial forms of spam as well).
Before Congress enacted the Can Spam act, there were forms of anti-spam 
legislation that required senders of UCE to have such prior business 
relationships with recipients before e-mail solicitations could be sent. 
But the various marketing lobbies whose constituents were gravely 
threatened by the prospect of not being able to send us junk mail 
managed to weild their influence the  and result is a fairly toothless 
law. Instead of requiring some prior business relationship with 
recipients, senders of UCE must provide a way for recipients to opt-out. 
The marketers got their way. There are enough loopholes in the law that 
it wouldn't require much in the way of creative thinking in order for a 
spammer to keep sending you UCE without breaking the law (even though 
you may have opted-out of one or more of his or her e-mail lists).
As a result, we're left to our own devices to solve the problem. We can 
run anti-spam solutions. But they're invariably imperfect solutions (if 
you develop one of these solutions, please do not contact me to convince 
me otherwise). In the course of blocking bad mail, they also 
occasionally block the good mail too (a false positive). As a result, we 
have three choices: ease up the blocking rules (which let's more spam 
into our inboxes), regularly check the spam (junk mail) folder to make 
sure it hasn't absconded with some good mail (why bother having an 
anti-spam solution at all if you have to do this), or don't check the 
spam folder at all and accept the false positives as collateral damage 
(not a good idea).
Although it's not mutually exclusive to the other three choices, now, 
thanks to a spam I received this morning, you have a fourth remedy. It 
may not affect the volume of spam in your inbox. But it might make you 
feel better to know you've done your part to battle spam. Although this 
particular UCE item had an unsubscribe link (putting it in compliance 
with the Can Spam Act), it was, after all, unsolicited. In other words, 
to me, it was spam. The mail in question came from 
PresentationExcellence.com, a company with which I have no prior 
relationship (business or otherwise) and it was a solicitation to attend 
a workshop being taught by Jerry Cahn.
In addition having a picture of the affable-looking Cahn (above left), 
the e-mail contains a mini-resume in hopes of convincing us of his 
credibility and qualifications to run the workshop. He's got a Ph.D. as 
well as his Juris Doctor (law degree) and has held C-level positions for 
a couple of organizations. He seems likes smart guy. That is, until you 
call him, which I did since he also provided his phone number on the 
spam. I have no reservations about publishing it here since the number 
is also on his Web site. It's 1-646-827-0009.
After dialing the number, I was actually surprised to hear the phone get 
answered "Jerry Cahn."  It was him in the flesh. The reason I called is 
because I'm always interested in knowing how I end on these e-mail 
lists. OK, I'm obsessed with the question. It's probably because I 
secretly fantasize about finding the person who sold my address to Cahn 
after harvesting it (along with a bunch of others) from the Internet 
and, well, we won't go there. Or maybe Cahn harvested it. So I asked 
Cahn point blank "Where did you get my address from?" I could have asked 
the question in a slightly different way: "What &$%^#!* right do you 
#$%^#@ have to *%^$#)(@ invade my #$@^%* inbox?" Yes. When you take 
liberties with my inbox, it really gets under my skin.
Cahn didn't have an answer. "Maybe you took one of our seminars before" 
said Cahn. Nope. Cahn offered to take me off the list, took down my 
number, and said he'd get back to me after he found out. That was it. 
For a guy as smart and educated as he is, I hung up the phone wondering 
how it could be that he had no other plausible explanation to offer. 
Surely, if he's the one answering his phone, then he's also got his 
hands in most other if not all aspects of his business and he should 
have some idea of how his e-mail lists are sourced (as a sidebar, I 
believe this to be one of the teeth missing in legislation; lack of 
audit trails on this data). Most of the business day has passed without 
getting a call back. I'm not surprised. Spammers have no compunction 
about invading your privacy and time whenever and however they feel like 
doing it. But when you actually invade theirs, they not nearly as 
interested in responding to you as they would be if you had your credit 
card out.
So, here's my message to Mr. Cahn: The reason I'm on your list is 
because you or someone you bought the list from harvested it from the 
Internet or another list, maybe one that was for sale. If my email 
address appeared somewhere in an intended context — for example here on 
ZDNet as a means of contacting me about what I've written or on a list 
that I actually belong on (eg: the list of customers to some on-line 
merchant) — I can assure you that the existence of my e-mail address on 
your list is several light years away from any of those legitimate 
contexts. I'm rather certain the same is true of the other e-mail 
addresses on your lists. Thank you for never putting my e-mail address 
on another one of your correspondences again and for not redistributing 
my e-mail address to others.
Since there's a chance that your name could end up on Mr. Cahn's e-mail 
list, my suggestion is to be proactive about it by beating him to the 
punch. After all, since the law doesn't require you to have a 
pre-existing relationship with Mr. Cahn before you can spam him, why not 
work the law to your advantage (just make sure you leave instructions on 
how to prevent further transmissions, like "to unsubscribe, reply with 
unsubscribe in the subject line."). Let Cahn know you don't want to 
receive any e-mail from him. Although I didn't check, he should be OK 
with this. Since he has no problems reaching out to people he doesn't 
know, why would he object to others reaching out to him? He's easy to 
reach at 1-646-827-0009.  Or, you can e-mail him at 
info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
                 Arachne at FreeLists                  
-- Arachne, The Premier GPL Web Browser/Suite for DOS --