May 2009
38 posts
EmailGarage: The new Dutch opt-in law →
“Gone are the days that companies could approach each other via generic email addresses (e.g. info@) to promote product or services. From now on electronic B2B communication will have the same restrictions as B2C communication.”
I’m sure that many marketers will respond to this by complaining about a “patchwork” of different laws in different places, much as the...
Dark Reading: More Than 80% Of Phishing Attacks... →
“In the second half of 2008, roughly 57,000 phishing attacks worldwide…were waged on 30,454 different domain names, only 5,591 of which were domains the phishers set up themselves. The rest were from legitimate Websites they had hijacked to carry out their exploits.”
Gizmodo: Obama's Supreme Court Nominee Knows Stuff... →
‘Say what you want about her rulings, but there’s something to be said for her being the first nominee to the court with any record in cyberlaw. That “internet” thing is getting to be a pretty big deal, I hear.’
more details: Wired, TechLaw
“Dear everybody I’ve ever met at a conference: When I give you a business...”
– Al Iverson, on Twitter
Forbes: Pentagon Seeks High School Hackers →
“The so-called Cyber Challenge…will create three new national competitions for high school and college students intended to foster a young generation of cybersecurity researchers. The contests will test skills applicable to both government and private industry: attacking and defending digital targets, stealing data, and tracing how others have stolen it.”
“This bombardment can be tiresome, downright aggravating and actually expensive,...”
– seen in untargeted spam from a recruiting firm
ClickZ: How to Get Your Mail Past the Inbox... →
“Getting your e-mail opened and read by your recipients is like trying to get into the most exclusive club in town.”
Not a bad analogy, but the story is incomplete.
Drew Kerr: Peter Kafka has had it with... →
“…now a whole lot of PR professionals, who really should know better than to do this, are going to get deservedly punished and shut out. Where are the managers and supervisors who are letting this happen? There never seems to be enough hand-wringing over PR spam from widely-read and respected people….”
The New Yorker (ibiblio): Rolled in Rare Bohemian... →
“Here’s an offer that’s so limited, you can’t have it.”
(via Doc Searls, on Twitter)
Direct: Permission Marketing 10 Years Later →
“While permission marketing doesn’t seem like a revolutionary concept now, 10 years ago it was unheard of.”
Technology Liberation Front: NebuAd is Dead →
“The company’s plan to track users through their ISPs for the purpose of targeting advertising met with public and congressional concern that ultimately led to its demise.”
Terry Zink: How virus researchers work →
“…with spam, the spam analyst only need read the context of the message and do a quick interpretation. With viruses, it requires a different skill set.”
Consumerist: Sears Pays $10 In Coupons For Your... →
“Max wants to know why he hasn’t received the $10 gift certificate that the cashier at Sears promised him for turning over an email address to receive marketing messages. We contacted Sears and found out what’s actually going on.”
Most people would just mark the mail as spam when they realized Sears had lied to them.
Return Path: Permission is Not Enough →
‘A digital marketer in France said to me the other day, “I don’t need to worry about inbox deliverability, I have permission.”’
Even anti-spammers used to think that was enough, so long as there was a working unsubscribe option. Most of us have learned.
Nextgov: Defense declares war on spam in bid to... →
“The Defense Information Systems Agency asked technology companies on Wednesday for ideas on how to build an e-mail defense system on the perimeter of its networks that can scan 50 million inbound messages a day to catch spam, viruses and cyberattacks.”
50 million? The biggest ISPs each process tens of billions, every single day.
(via circleid)
Visbility: 5 Ways to Kill Your Email... →
“Clearly the world of email deliverability is much more complex than it would appear on the surface. The good news, however, is that you will never have to deal with this ugly underbelly…IF, you avoid some of the common errors….”
Red Pill Email: Why “System” Transactional Emails... →
It’s 11 PM. Do you know what mail your web server has been sending?
Ars Technica: Craigslist trumpets 90% drop in... →
There’s been a 90% - 95% drop in erotic service listings on Craigslist since they started requiring a verified phone number and other proof of nonspamminess.
Perhaps something to be learned here for other popular online services?
(via @geekstats on Twitter)
Download Squad: ZZOMG, Twitter Porn Names is a... →
“…the formula provided to create your name just happens to match some very common security questions to help people reset their passwords. Pet’s name. First teacher. Street you grew up on. See the pattern?”
(via @jrconlin)
“Based on my spam folder, the Nigerian royal family is huge, not especially good...”
– Wil Wheaton, on Twitter
Return Path: How to Steal Reputation →
‘“Reputation hijacking” is intended to describe when a spammer or other bad actor uses someone else’s system — usually one of the large webmail providers — to send their spam. The idea is that in doing so, they’re hijacking the reputation of the webmail provider’s IPs instead of risking the reputation of IPs under their own control. But I really have...
“Explicit consent for email, in my opinion, absolutely requires adequate notice....”
– Evan Burke, on Twitter
Consumerist: Auto Warranty Robocallers Call... →
“If you’re going to engage in random robodialing to unlisted cell phones, pray very very hard that you do not dial the attorney general of a state in which you plan to continue doing business.”
Similarly, if you’re sending bulk email, don’t screw with permission for the addresses of the people who run major ISP mail systems or reputation services.
(How do you know...
Susan Brenner on CircleID: Crime vs. Cybercrime:... →
‘We should not simply assume criminal conduct vectored through cyberspace represents an entirely new phenomenon, i.e., cybercrime. It may represent nothing more than perpetrators’ using cyberspace to engage in conduct that has long been outlawed. The development of the telephone, for example, made it possible to perpetrate fraud in new and different ways, but fraud itself has been...
Consumerist: Internet Prank Calls Car Warranty... →
“A Reddit user figured out the phone number for one of the car warranty robocallers and has decided the best revenge would be to post it online so the internet can annoy them just as much as they’ve been annoying us.”
AWeber Inbox Ideas: “Do Not Reply” Address? Don’t... →
‘“Do Not Reply” addresses…try to take a permission-based, conversational marketing medium and mold it into an online version of TV or billboard advertising.’
Claws and Paws: SPAM-L list will be shut down... →
“Recurring incidents involving animosity between list members have taken their toll … we believe that the list has outlived its usefulness. Anyone with a web browser can find a plethora of anti-spam resources that did not exist when the list was created in August 1995.”
1 tag
“It is impossible for man to look straight at the present, because he is too...”
– Image by Abe K via Flickr
Marshall McLuhan
Erica OGrady: Invasion of the Opportunists →
“There is a disturbing trend happening on Twitter. The Opportunists are popping up everywhere. Opportunists are people who follow trends or fads, and try to Get Rich Quick by tricking innocent people. …They pretend to be something they are not - and if no one calls them on it - THEY GET AWAY WITH IT.”
Consumerist: On The Beat With Facebook's... →
“…of the 850 employees Facebook has on its payroll, 150 are part of its User Operations division, which is charged with tracking down user-submitted violations of the site’s code of conduct…”
A VC: Use The Public Channel For Better Customer... →
Dan Wilson: The Cluetrain Manifesto: 10 years on. →
“Sure, we have business blogs opening the lid, Twitter gives us insight into what businesses are doing, but the vast majority of this communication is broadcast. Marketing messages, positive spin and highly-controlled outward bound marketing are the disappointing norm.”
Market Research Deathwatch: Get off the Camel →
“You got so good at marketing to us, so proficient at pulling our puppet strings that it didn’t even matter if the thing you were selling was a piece of crap, because you knew how to mindfuck us into buying it. You became so focused on cutting costs and maximizing profits that you completely forgot about us. We knew we had become just faceless consumer units to you, and deep down we were mad...
Hoover’s Business Insight Zone: “The community of... →
‘The Cluetrain invites us to get past eyeballs … and past “targeting.” If I have something to offer you, I’m going to talk with you about it — emphasis upon both TALK and WITH.’
Wildfire Strategic Marketing: CluetrainPlus10:... →
“Wouldn’t it be great to have your customers, and potential customers, on your side & providing you with actionable feedback, or would you prefer to be under siege & on the defensive?”
Media Driving with Jay Moonah: Lighten Up! (part... →
“The problem comes when we start mistaking the brand and the message for the actual relationship. We even start to treat our brands and our messages as more important than the relationship with our customers. And that’s when they start laughing at us.”
canada.com: A quiet overhaul of the do-not-call... →
“Buried at the very end of the 69-page bill are provisions that would lay the groundwork to kill the National Do-Not-Call List.
…In its place, an opt-in would apply, meaning that Canadians would no longer need to register their phone numbers on a do-not-call list. Instead, the presumption would be that telemarketers could not call without prior consent. The ECPA would also bring with...