Re: alfaBB.com spam??

[Richard Welty <rwelty@domain.elided>]

On Wed, 27 Nov 2002 06:26:36 -0800 karl doll <karld@domain.elided> wrote:
> Did anyone else get spam from www.alfaBB.com? Since I was identified as
> an
> Alfa owner and received their mail twice last night, I suspect they're
> mining this Digest for addresses.

one copy was sent directly to the digest, so everyone go it it. the other
was sent to individual addresses. the individual who sent it was subscribed
at the time, or it'd have bounced. whether they are subscribed now is
unknown to me. i suppose i could check.
 
> I know how much Richard likes spammers. As my French boss would say
> "like a
> hawk on a chicken".

it goes back a long way. some of you may remember Krazy Kevin, the magazine
spammer (he used to send out nearly identical spams purporting to be from a
female college student, trying to hawk discount magazine subscriptions.) my
longstanding war to keep his ads off the digests has perhaps affected my
point of view (as a side note, Krazy Kevin did eventually attract the
attention of the NY Attorney General, and did spend some quality time as a
guest of New York State's Department of Corrections. it wasn't over the
spam, but over the fact that the suckers who ordered from him didn't always
get what they ordered. fancy that. rule number 1: Spammers Lie)

> PS: I'm not using this e-mail as a way to further their publicity stunt,
> though it may have that side-effect.

i'm not sure what i think at this point in time. if it's a not-for-profit
venture, then it's merely a slightly annoying effort to balkanize the
online alfa community. there's not much that can be done about something
like that except go "tisk, tisk".

if there's an actual business model behind it, and an intent to make money
then it's an impermissible commercial advertisement, and i'm very ticked
off. the situation is directly addressed at
/email-policy.html, and the terms stated there imply
that they now owe me $14000 plus or minus. the legal standing of this
notice is unclear, though, and somehow i doubt i'll collect. sigh.

i don't know which it is yet.

richard
--
Richard Welty                                         rwelty@domain.elided
Averill Park Networking                                         518-573-7592
              Unix, Linux, IP Network Engineering, Security
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