integrated marketing spam

13 replies
There seems to be a new trend of email marketing which is a result of a popular marketing strategy, which was released as a rather large product launch recently, this marketing strategy works with the cooperation of more than one internet marketer, while this is an interesting and profitable strategy and I respect the product owner, someone is using this information to share lists, and email addresses.

I just spent the last hour running down the person or persons unknown who are sending email to my support email address.

I began receiving email from various internet marketers, about two weeks ago.

At first, I thought ok, just one or two emails is not a problem nor is it worth the time it takes to go after and track these people down.

So I just ignored them, the problem is that apparently who ever is behind this
[sharing of email addresses, with out my permission]

has now released my email address to several more internet marketers.

This irritates me, as this particular email address is used for business, my clients, which pay me to create software for their brick and mortar stores, are the only people who should have access to this email address.

So basically at this point this is no longer a mistake it is spam.

Because when an email is received at this email address, it is relayed to my cell phone so that my customers may contact me, any time they need support.

(yes they pay for that support)

If my client is compiling a sales report at midnight, and they need my help then I am available to them, so when I get a page on my cell phone from a spam email address in the middle of the night,

can you imagine how this would effect you were you to be in my shoes.

I would hate to think that a warrior was behind this, yet, this is where my research is pointing.

I am currently tracking this down to find out who the offender is.

This is taking up my time, which is valuable to me and others who also value my time enough to pay me to help them when they need help.

So far my attempts at discovering who the culprit is has been difficult, however I am determined to find this miscreant and then when I do, there will be TROUBLE.

I have an idea who this is, but no proof positive yet, I expect this person knows fully who he is
and is most likely reading this post right now wondering if I will trace it back to him.

Dont wonder, I will find you and when I do, you had better have a really good reason else the preverbal pre processed sewage is about to hit the fan.

I understand a mistake and even a judgement issue, more likely this person received this email address from someone else, ( this is the person I want to get to know )

So now after a couple of sleepless nights, you can imagine about how I feel right now.

I have received email from about 7 to 12 different Internet marketers, all with an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email,

As you can imagine, I do not ever subscribe to a marketing list using this email address.

So I am really curious about how in the [he double toothpicks] all these marketers received this email address.

I intend on finding out and I will find out, I am posting this today because I suspect that the person responsible, is a warrior or perhaps was a warrior.

I am curious has anyone else begun to receive email, from marketers that you did not subscribe to their list? this would be following a recent [LARGE] product launch.
#integrated #marketing #spam
  • Profile picture of the author Steve Peters Benn
    Hi Tim,

    I have had the same thing. I have my support tickets transferred to my cell, and it is getting annoying as suddenly I am getting lots of emails from biggish names that I was never interested in getting.

    I am just reporting them as spam, not messing around. I never subscribed to their lists.
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    • Profile picture of the author Tim Franklin
      Originally Posted by Steve Peters View Post

      Hi Tim,

      I have had the same thing. I have my support tickets transferred to my cell, and it is getting annoying as suddenly I am getting lots of emails from biggish names that I was never interested in getting.

      I am just reporting them as spam, not messing around. I never subscribed to their lists.
      Yes, that does seem to be the right thing to do, I was just giving the benefit of the doubt, to some of these bigger name internet marketers, I am hoping to find out who is at the bottom of this, because some of these marketers may think that the list they have is legitimate, however, it looks like the easiest way is to report this to ISPs and hosts.

      I do hate to do that, but you are right it is the easiest method of getting the attention of the errant marketer.
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  • Profile picture of the author Andy Fletcher
    Same here. I've been getting those emails as well. I'm very unimpressed and wish I'd setup proper honeypot email addresses for the services.

    For anyone who doesn't know what a honeypot email address is it's using the name of the product/person in the email address. Eg if I wanted to sign up to Aweber for Free Link Cloaker I'd use aweber@freelinkcloaker.com then if I ever get spammed at that address BAM!
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    • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
      Andy,

      Be careful with the BAM reflex. Those kinds of addresses are so common that a person determined to be a nuisance could easily guess one or more of them.

      For example, I could look at my subscriber list for anything that looked like it pointed to me, and then subscribe addresses with similar formatting, but different tags, to other lists.

      Example: Someone signs up to my list with talkbiz-com@example.com. I could easily guess what other lists they MIGHT sign up for. Let's say associateprograms-com@example.com

      Sign that up for a bunch of lists and, if I guessed right, it looks like Allan traded addresses.

      See what I mean?

      Tagged addresses should not look like tagged addresses.


      Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author Tim Franklin
    Good point, Paul,

    What is interesting in my situation is that the support mechanism is embedded into software products, so even my customers do not know what the email address is, they just push a button and the software contacts me with the support request.

    so that email address is not public and I do not use it to subscribe to any lists.

    Which begs the question how did they get it, to add even more mystery to this situation some of these emails are coming from people I have done business with in the past, but never using that particular email address.

    Really strange that...

    either someone I purchased a product from used a scraper to find an email address or they obtained it some other way.

    So either I have to go back and update all my software or find the culprit who is providing my email address to his affiliates.

    Either way it is irritating and it looks like I am not the only one who is effected by this marketing strategy.
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    • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
      Tim,
      either someone I purchased a product from used a scraper to find an email address or they obtained it some other way.
      If that's a PayPal address that you used to place orders, you can pretty forget about it being kept private once it hits the wrong people.

      It's also possible that someone "intercepted" the address using a sniffer when a support ticket was sent through the software. That's kind of an odd thought, but it's possible.


      Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author Steve Peters Benn
    The level of guru I have been getting emails off suggests to me that there is a common bad source, where my signups have been misused....
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    • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
      Steve,
      The level of guru I have been getting emails off suggests to me that there is a common bad source, where my signups have been misused....
      Entirely possible.

      Could have been deliberately traded. And yes, I've heard credible stories of this happening in places you would not expect.

      Could have been a security problem at an autoresponder service or the website of one or more marketers to whom you gave your address (including the possibility of an "inside job.")

      There are other possibilities, but those are the ones that seem most likely, given what you've described.


      Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author Adam Kenzington
    Hi Tim,

    Yes, I have had this happen recently, too. I wasn't aware someone's product was teaching this. I have an email address that I only use for my Ebay & PayPal purchases. About 3-4 weeks ago I started getting spammy e-mails from a varity of people, many with the same pitch, "you've just received a payment!". When you open it up it says "wouldn't it be nice to get multiple email like this, with money waiting for you...?" Well I am getting multiple emails like this, but no money is involved. There are "Make Money Now" types I receive, also.

    Someone sold my address to make a little extra profit. I'll go a step further than you are willing to go, Tim. I know who one of the worst culprits is. I ordered one of their products and was forced to give my UNLISTED phone number in order to download the product, AFTER having already paid for it. It was late at night, and I wasn't thinking clearly enough to give a fake number (I'll know better next time). But within a week I started getting calls offering me this program or that, and they even mentioned it would go hand in glove with the program I just purchased from "Spam Boy". They TOLD ME who they bought my private information from. I have since paid to change my phone to yet another unlisted number.

    So, knowing for a fact who did me dirty, I'm going to name names to hopefully influence people!

    TELLMAN KNUTSON, burn in Hell, you S.O.B.! (All views expressed are those of the poster, and not neccessarily the views of the Warrior Forum.)

    I was going to go to a live event recently, until I found out Tellman Knutson would be one of the instructors. I quickly cancelled those plans, as I wouldn't want to be in the same room with him, and definately feel he has nothing to teach that I would want to learn.

    Anyway, Tim, I feel your pain.

    Adam
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    • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
      Adam,

      Are you completely certain that no-one else had that phone number, and that it wasn't in your domain listings?

      If it turns out that Tellman really is selling customer data like that, it's going to get interesting. Especially if he does it with data from folks in the EU...


      Paul
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      • Profile picture of the author MarkHBE
        I wonder when marketers are going to learn that spamming doesn't work. And spamming marketers probably makes even less sense.

        I get spam emails at my work address from major companies. Lists that I have definitely not opted into. Actually I don't opt into anything with my work email, so they're definitely getting it from my website. I might expect it from small time scammers, but without naming names, I'm talking about big companies that all of us have heard of. You'd think that at least they would know not to do that, but apparently not.
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