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Reader Comments on Aardvark Daily 21 February 2002

Note: the comments below are the unabridged submissions of readers and do
not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher.

 

From: Nik
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Responding to spam

IT savvy people should know not to respond to spam or you
just end up getting more. So its no real shock to see that
few people complained, as most spam has a forged return
address of some sort.

I just delete that sort of spam without running the web-
bugs. If the spammers think your address is inactive,
eventually they might give up!




From: Steve Peacocke
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Shell Shocked

The results reported from the spamming company confirms
what I would expect. Despite their best (not good enough)
efforts to target people involved in specific industries,
most of their emails did not reach a live human - ie:
playing darts blind-folded without first checking if the
pub, let alone the dart-board, is still where it was some
years ago.

Of those that reached a human, all but the least
intelligent simply pressed delete on the several spam
emails that arrived in their in-box for that hour.

We, as longer term internet users (ie; long enough to have
an email go onto someone's list), have gotten so shell-
shocked with an ever increasing number of spam emails that
we have simply given up. It's like trying to get government
to look at facts rather than political points, It just does
no good. If you reply with anger, all you'll get for your
trouble is to be added to a premium "Live User" list and
receive more spam. If you contact Xtra or some others, all
you'll get is silence.

There will always be people who send on chain letters; send
those 500K moving pictures; email everyone they know
telling them to delete Kernel.exe because it's a virus; or
buy goods from a spammer.

What we've got to do is find a way to detect those people
at birth, and throttle them.




From: paul warner
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Spamming

I suspect that the reason that more people did not kick up
a fuss is that there is a golden rule.  Don't respond to
the unsubscribe link .  It just tells them that it is a
valid email address and you'll get lots more.




From: Sam Richardson
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Talking of Spam

I recieved in my inbox yesterday, mail from fullpromote.com
asking me if I would like to promote my website
geekpages.co.nz. Well, first of all, I don't actually own
the site, and second of all, it must be somewhat easy to
get someones contact details via the DNS records about the
site, so why then, was the mail targetted at me?

Never-the-less, we have found the next prank call that we
are going to make.




From: Peter George
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Spamming

I think a major reason why so few would "kick up a fuss" is
it takes too long to do this with each spam we all receive,
I have wanted to do something a number of times but have
decided that delete and ignore is the best use of my time.
Perhaps this is ok in the short term but it possibly may be
to our ongoing detriment.

What is not determined from what you have said is that
while 60% approximately "read" but did not buy, it is
unknown what effect these people will have on business if
disgruntled. How many of them are prospective customers who
now are less likely to deal with a spamming company? This
needs to be weighed against the 0.1% success rate.




From: Simon
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Reading of Spam

66% of people read spam?

I don't quite think so. I would imagine alot of the people
in that percentage were caught by Microsoft Outlooks email
preview.

I personally run Microsoft outlook express at home, and lets
face it with Microsoft pushing IE and Outlook on you, who
doesn't? The problem is here to delete the spam I have to
read it, but I don't actually read the spam!

I would imagine that the real percentage is quite a lot
lower than 66%




From: Tom V
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Please tell me the name of the company

So I can make sure that I never purchase any product off
them and advise anyone else I know to also not do so. The
sooner we drive wankers like that out of business the
better.

I always wanted to meet a spammer. I can truthfully say
that they're about the only group of people I have an
almost uncontrollable urge to punch in the face.

Aardvark Responds:
They say there's no such thing as bad publicity -- so I made the
decision not to name the company involved.  As far as I'm concerned
they're not getting any free promotion through this site.


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