I know, I know. I’ve been a bit cranky lately. I can’t help it.
Here I am, lazily lounging in bed on a hard-earned Saturday morning and watching some TV when I realize, to my horror, that I’m watching an ad for mailing lists.
“You must be dreaming, Kate. You’re having a nightmare. Wake up!”, I think to myself. But no…it’s a fucking commercial promoting salesgenie.com. GAH!!!
If you’re like me and morbidly curious, you can check out their site, but I recommend only doing so with a full arsenal of security and privacy software. One of my favorite little gems is where they promote a small portion of their parent company (infousa) being covered by “60 Minutes II” (mpeg). Though I have not seen the entire segment, I’ll go out on a limb and guess that the footage they showcase is the only portion that they could possibly spin out of context in any sort of positive manner.
So I am compelled to return to the Pit, and pound away at the keyboard yet again. For the past few days I had managed to have some self restraint and not start a thread citing an article about the observed 30-450% increase in spam in recent months, but seeing people fucking selling mailing lists on TV just threw that self control right out the window.
I’ve got two words for you:
Mozilla Thunderbird.
Thunderbird is indeed a great product, but end-user apps aren’t making a dent in the amount of spam that congests the internet.
I was an Abuse Investigator at an ISP for many years (now doing Fraud).
Someone using our email servers to advertise or promote products and services, who generates spam complaints and openly admits to purchasing a list…gets one chance to redeem themselves. If their next email campaign also generates complaints, their account is nuked from orbit. But that is the story of the “good guys”. The small business owners who are just trying to get the word out and find new customers and don’t know any better. They use their real name and a credit card that is actualy theirs to pay for their account, and they use their own computer to send the mails.
These mailing lists being sold by salesgenie/infousa are just as likely (if not more likely) to be purchased or stolen by the real spammers, the criminal botnet operators and the folks who use the plunder of identity theft to sign up fraudulent accounts with ISPs.
Y’know, I don’t even believe in the death penalty in felony murder cases. So why does this stuff make me want to put a rope around somebody’s neck and drag him out to the hangin’ oak?
Because you’re a big ol’ softy, that’s why. If ever a crime called out for tarring and feathering, spamming is that crime. Hanging’s too good for 'em.
Great. Now I shall forevermore have a mental image of you as Hanover Fiste. “Hanging’s too good for 'em! Burning’s too good for 'em! They should be torn into little bitty pieces and buried alive!”
Me too, dammit. I was going to say exactly the same thing.
[SUB]Damn, what a great line.[/SUB]