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Johnny's Ramblings In the Crosshairs A Word from Our Sponsor Forum Watch Coders Corner Scumbag of the Week |
Issue # 202 (08-12-2003)
Changes Afoot !We're changing things again here at Jimworld, bringing in some new staffers, and blazing new trails in the forums. Thanks for sticking with us while the dust settles here ... in the end, your JimWorld will be a much better place. |
| Scumbag of the Week |
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SpamArrest.com. Remember them? I talked endlessly about how wonderful they are in a previous Gazette issue, and even ran their banners here at JimWorld for a few months. Their "service" did such good a job on my inbox, that I just had to tell you about it. Thanks to SpamArrest.com, I have a spam-free inbox, which is great... for me. Not so great for everyone that emails me, though. It was pointed out to me by one of our members (dax) that SpamArrest was not all that they claimed to be. So, I did some digging, and lo and behold, dax was right.
The way that SpamArrest works is that when you are one of their customers, they download all of the email from your real inbox. Then, they check it against their database, and make available to you the messages from individuals that you have approved. For the remaining email messages, SpamArrest sends an email message to them, asking them to verify themselves. If they do (by clicking a link in the email message and entering a password), their email is also made available to you. The net result in my case, was that out of the 8,000+ emails a day that I receive, only the 100 or so that are from people that I like actually get into my inbox. Beautiful, right? Well the ugly part is that SpamArrest is able to build, based on which individuals went through that verification process, a list of thousands of email addresses that are valid, read by a person, and more importantly, read by a person that would click on a link in the email. Unbeknownst to me, and most SpamArrest customers, is that while SpamArrest is protecting me from spam, they're secretly harvesting the email addresses of everyone that has validated themselves to be allowed to email me. SPAMARREST HAS BEEN SPAMMING THAT LIST. On one hand, they protect me, and on the other hand, they're spamming all of the people that I "white listed" and trust. Screwing me, and annoying my contacts in the process. While they've not yet admitted to selling this list off, I can only imagine that's going to be their next step. While this policy is alluded to within their privacy policy, the privacy policy is NOT made available at all to people as they verify themselves (verification page example: http://spamarrest.com/a?107411106:76542). Very shady indeed. SpamArrest has not responded to my email messages or phone calls in relation to these findings. Their owner has made some public statements, however, which are quite alarming... "Our privacy policy states that we are allowed to contact "senders", that is, the people who send our customers e-mail. Please refer the section entitled "HOW DO WE USE THE PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT?". ... and ... "Every person who got this e-mail from us has either sent an e-mail to one of our customers, or been added to one of our customer's white list explicitly." I have stopped using spamarrest, and am looking at alternative solutions to my uncontrollable inbox. I recommend that anyone that's using spamarrest.com's service stop doing so immediately, and look for another way out. Right now, I'm evaluating a program called "Spam Bully" that apparently operates much like spamarrest, but without using a 3rd party server, so the information is all kept privately on your own computer. Stay tuned to The Gazette for my findings. For More Information: http://www.avnonline.com/issues/200302/newsarchive/021403_1.shtml http://static.samspade.org/spamarrest.html http://www.politechbot.com/p-04457.html http://spamarrest.com/privacy.jsp http://www.spambully.com |
Read the Scumbag of the Week section from the Last Issue or in the Following Issue
JimWorld Member comments and feedback ...
Posted On: 04/19/2006 04:35
Posted By: alfie1848
Posted By: alfie1848
Thank you for your review, I will benefit from your suggestions. I have one
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
Posted On: 04/19/2006 04:43
Posted By: alfie1848
Posted By: alfie1848
Thank you for your review, I will benefit from your suggestions. I have one
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
Posted On: 04/19/2006 04:57
Posted By: alfie1848
Posted By: alfie1848
Thank you for your review, I will benefit from your suggestions. I have one
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
Posted On: 04/19/2006 04:10
Posted By: alfie1848
Posted By: alfie1848
Thank you for your review, I will benefit from your suggestions. I have one
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
Posted On: 01/04/2008 08:04
Posted By: boltonuv
Posted By: boltonuv
This "Scumbag of the Week" article is irresponsible. I had not trouble at all in receiving the following response from SpamArrest:
"Hi James,
Thank you for your email.
James, what you see there is absolutely wrong and is done to misguide our users and our new customers from Spam Arrest. We have over 1.5 million customers with us including you. You have been with us for a very long time, James. You can check with any of your contacts whether they have received any junk emails from us. We never do such a thing and its completely against our ethics! We hate spam as much as you do and so, along with stopping it, we make sure that none of our customer's emails are noted as spam. We warn our customers from sending bulk emails about the fact that their contacts might misunderstand their bulk emails as spam and will turn against them and Spam Arrest. A company following only such healthy practices can never do such a thing like spamming. What we value the most is our customer's trust and we will make all efforts to retain that in the best way possible. We never admit your personal information to any third party under whatsoever circumstances. You will find a whole lot of misleading things like this in Internet, James. We have friends and foes like anyone else in this planet.
I hope you will understand us the best way possible, James. Please do let me know if you need any further clarifications regarding this.
Best Regards,
Peter
Technical Support Specialist
Spam Arrest"
In the 3 years that I have used SpamArrest, I personally have never received one complaint from anyone that has been 'spammed' from any theoretical 'spam list' that SpamArrest may have created. I think that their statement above makes it clear that they would not do this.
I behooves you to publish a retraction.
Jim Bolton
"Hi James,
Thank you for your email.
James, what you see there is absolutely wrong and is done to misguide our users and our new customers from Spam Arrest. We have over 1.5 million customers with us including you. You have been with us for a very long time, James. You can check with any of your contacts whether they have received any junk emails from us. We never do such a thing and its completely against our ethics! We hate spam as much as you do and so, along with stopping it, we make sure that none of our customer's emails are noted as spam. We warn our customers from sending bulk emails about the fact that their contacts might misunderstand their bulk emails as spam and will turn against them and Spam Arrest. A company following only such healthy practices can never do such a thing like spamming. What we value the most is our customer's trust and we will make all efforts to retain that in the best way possible. We never admit your personal information to any third party under whatsoever circumstances. You will find a whole lot of misleading things like this in Internet, James. We have friends and foes like anyone else in this planet.
I hope you will understand us the best way possible, James. Please do let me know if you need any further clarifications regarding this.
Best Regards,
Peter
Technical Support Specialist
Spam Arrest"
In the 3 years that I have used SpamArrest, I personally have never received one complaint from anyone that has been 'spammed' from any theoretical 'spam list' that SpamArrest may have created. I think that their statement above makes it clear that they would not do this.
I behooves you to publish a retraction.
Jim Bolton
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