Fife SPAMMERS

Posted on 31 May 2004 by Weblog in Business, Security

SPAM Email

I’m absolutely furious with this Unsolicited Commercial Email (SPAM), which after some investigation has been found to have been made possible through a distribution list sourced from Fife Chamber of Commerce. The image of the email has been blurred to protect the innocent. Don’t want other SPAMMERS to have access to email addresses from an image on this blog!

Initially, I had no idea that the information came via information supplied by Fife Chamber of Commerce, but felt so compelled to do something about it that I spent 20 minutes trying to remove myself from the SPAMMER’s distribution list. After all other avenues and mechanisms of complaint and/or removal were exhausted, I eventually picked up the telephone and spoke with someone from Forth Active – the SPAMMERS. They were kind enough to offer me the information about the source of my email address information and to offer an assurance that my details would be removed from their mailing lists. Technology is great but real human beings are much better at dealing with complaints!

There were a number of things wrong with the message:

A wide distribution list which can easily be abused by anyone on the list

The email addresses can easily be farmed from the message

It also now presents a new security risk to my own business. If even one person on this list was to be compromised then we could all be compromised

The mailing list removal mechanism didn’t work. Looks like their mail server is down

I had previously indicated to Fife Chamber that I didn’t wish to receive any UCE (SPAM) from third parties. I’m more than happy to see the occasional email from the Chamber but don’t want every individual with a marketing budget to have access to my personal email address

I find SPAM offensive, even if it is meant as proper commerical advertising. SPAMMERS don’t get any business from me, so don’t waste your time!

The technological issues are easily addressed using software freely available on the net, so there isn’t really an excuse for the mistakes made. The ethics of using SPAM as a mechanism for advertising and marketing are another issues, but I suspect the feedback going to the company under question may make them rethink this strategy.

In all fairness, the person I spoke with at Forth Active was extremely professional and sincerely apologetic about the issues I raised, especially the wide distribution list. They even went so far as to say they won’t be repeating the exercise or “mistake” as he called it. I suspect I wasn’t the first or last one to complain this morning. I won’t be doing any business with them in the near future, which is a real shame since they are a Fife company and I’d rather see the business being kept locally.

I even sent off an email to the Chief Executive of Fife Chamber of Commerce to complain at the (ab)use of my personal email address but alas this was bounced due to their email server being unavailable. The Fife Chamber website is also offline at the moment.

Some may view my approach to security as OTT, but I’d like to think that I’m just a bit ahead of where most organisations are heading. I know many of my I.T. colleagues have a similar approach, business is just lagging a bit behind us. Let us now hope that businesses and other organisations catch up fast!