Internet Defense Technologies

Been seeing a lot of complaints about this one, well not really complaints, more like amusement.

Just another example of trying to use buzz words to get you to open a spam email.  It is spam, no reason to open it, go ahead and delete it.

It generally just says this:

<three separate pics that say>

Honest Advice and Amazing Cures from America’s Most Trusted Pharmacist!
Best Price on Net
Worldwide Shipping
Free Pills with every order
<pic> Cialis
<pic>  Levitra
<pic> Viagra
<pic> Cialis Soft
Discover 1,097 drugstore secrets that help you keep more money in your pocket and put more health in your tank!
Click here
<end of pics>

To your health,
<pic of sig>
David Zinczenko
Editor-in-Chief

<pictures of:>
Unsubscribe | Your Privacy Settings

Reports are floating around that Verizon has sent out a “notice” to all of its customers.  The notice sets up a sort of backwards “opt-in” mechanism for sharing your private data.

It isn’ really an “opt-in” rather it’s a “negative opt-in”.  A negative opt-in is when you have to tell someone not to add you to the list and if you don’t tell them not to, you are agreeing to let them (and in this case Verizon) share your personal data.

Even, if like most people, you didn’t read the fine print and didn’t even realize that you were opting in to begin with, and had no idea that opting out was a possibility. Customers who get their bills online instead of in the mail don’t even get the notice.

Information Verizon may share includes what services you have purchased, your billing, technical, and location information. Information can be shared with “affiliates, agents and parent companies.” That’s not very reassuring. “Affiliate” in particular is a very fuzzy term, and usually means any marketer who has signed up with a program and paid a fee.

So, most likely you are about to get spammed by Verizon’s affiliates if you haven’t already.

Every ISP (Internet Service Provider) has their own rules and procedures.

The industry standard is generally thought to be that ISPs will block a sender IP address (an Internet Protocol address, which is a numerical identification that is assigned to devices participating in a computer network utilizing the protocol for communication between its computer) if it gets 1 complaint out of about 1,000 emails sent.

So, if you are getting spam, definitely report it.

Unfortunately serious spammers (of the viagra and fake watch variety) don’t send from one constant IP address. They vary it often and make it otherwise very hard to spot them, so reporting may not stop it.

The people who do use a constant IP address are generally from a real company and either don’t know better or thought they were some how above it (they did have a box you checked which said they could spam, I mean email you).

For those who are sending these emails.  Make sure people want what you are sending and you are sending what you said you would.  If you are using an old list, some of your subscribers may have forgotten about you or their email addresses may no longer be valid. There are even some subscribers who just use the complaint (”mark as spam”) button when they want to get off of a list because it is more convenient than the unsubscribe link.

So, put the unsubscribe link at the top and the bottom so that people will do that before they hit the report spam buton.

I don’t always feel the need to call out any particular companies.  It happens that I love Netflix, very happy with what they have set up, how easy it is to get movies and how quickly they respond to problems.

However, the fact that they have obviously sold/given away my email address is very annoying.

You see, I set up a special email account just for Netflix (then all members of the family could check the email) and am amazed at the amount of spam this account gets now.  Just a boat load, more than some of the email addresses I use regularly for work.

I have not used this email address for a single other thing, nothing at all, so there is only one place that could have done this.

I am very disappointed with them, not sure how happy I am about this…