#C27 McCarthy Tétrault, Opponents to C-27 Anti-spam Bill, spammed me

McCarthy Tétrault testified in from of the standing committee on Industry, vehemently opposed to C-27 opt-in clauses. They have also been quoted on blogs and in the newspapers deriding the opt-in permission aspects of C-27 as well as other clauses.

They just spammed me.










From: McCarthy Tétrault LLP / S.E.N.C.R.L., s.r.l.
Subject: e-Alert: CRTC Shapes Canadian "Net Neutrality" Rules
Date: October 23, 2009 4:29:38 PM EDT
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Spamfighter.com : Too dumb for words (but I'll try)

"We are looking into a few solutions that could solve this issue for you and I thank you for bringing this to my attention.

I hope you are satisfied with the solution and I would appreciate if you would delete your blog as we are not Spammers and our people are doing a very tuff job of fighting this 24/7." - Henrik Sorensen, CEO Spamfighter.com October 14, 2009

Last week, I told you that Spamfighter.com are Spammers

Laura Atkins blogrolled this and offered up some really good advice (as always) over at her Word to the Wise set-up: Suppressing email addresses: it’s good for everyone

Henrik Sorensen, the Spamfighter.com CEO wrote back and expressed concern. Apparently, they can suppress an email address, but only for a short time, after which they purge their suppression list. Mr. Sorensen took the time to inform me that my email address 'isn't very original' which is why people keep using it as a fake to sign up and try out his product.

Perhaps. I was looking for something more declarative and informative when I signed up for gmail. Perhaps along the lines of thinking when the team at spamfighter.com named their company. Or perhaps they weren't very original, either.

In any event, Mr. Soresensen went on to tell me that the unsolicited commercial email I am receiving from his company isn't spam because

1. "This is not in anyway unsolicited"
2. Calling us "SPAMMERS" is in any case unfair ... We have not send you emails containing "spam" or offers of 3 party software, Viagra or anything like that
3. you are arguing from a theoretically point of view and not from the intention the mail from sent to "this email address". ... In this case you are on a theoretical lane.
4. I'm sure we could discuss for years of what "best practice" should or could be.
   

Well, to prove my theory, I once again received spam from Spamfighter.com this morning, October 20, 2009 3:00:00 AM EDT:

Dear fellow SPAMfighter

We can see you installed SPAMfighter a couple of days ago (I didn't, of course and cannot ~ neil) and we just want to make sure that everything is all right.
By now more than 90% of all spam should be filtered into the spam folder automatically.

If you’re happy with SPAMfighter PRO you can buy your subscription here.
If you are using SPAMfighter as a home user, but are not interested in subscribing, we automatically convert your SPAMfighter Pro to the free SPAMfighter Standard when your trial period expires.

One last comment from Mr. Sorensen:

"That you keep this up is purely harassment when you know better"

Just so. I am now checking my archives and contacts to see if the Office of the Danish Consumer Ombudsman would be interested in pursuing other avenues towards a remedy.

Not to quote chapter & verse or anything, but ...
http://www.forbrug.dk/english/dco/lawsandacts/marketing-practises-act/s6/

Section 6: Unsolicited communication with specific customers

6. A trader may not approach anyone by means of electronic mail, an automated calling system or facsimile machine with a view to the sale of products, real property, other property, labour and services unless the party concerned has requested him to do so.

(3) A trader must not approach a specific natural person using other means of remote communication with a view to sales as referred to in subsection 1 if the person concerned has declined such communications from the trader,

Spamfighter.com are Spammers

This is a picture of Daniel B. Hjortholt, Henrik Sørensen, Martin Dyring-Andersen and Martin Thorborg. They own a company called Spamfighter.com, and they are spammers.



"How could that be?" you might ask. Allow me to explain.

On July 07, 2007 I received my first email from this company "Welcome new SPAMfighter" after I downloaded trial software. It turned out it was Windows-only, so I never installed it, as I use a Mac. Have done since 1986.

Then, Is SPAMfighter doing OK? - 07/23/2007 & Your SPAMfighter Pro Subscription - 08/09/2007 both came in. Typical sales-cycle stuff.

The subscription for the free software ran out, I opted out of their emails, and thought 'that is that'

Then suddenly, Welcome new SPAMfighter (Again!!) - 10/09/2007 & Is SPAMfighter doing OK? (Again!) - 10/15/2009 were received. Sigh.

This last was from Daniel Hjortholt - service@spamfighter.com

I wrote to Daniel and indicated I hadn't downloaded his software, and told him I wasn't doing OK.

On 10/18/2007 Per Hindkjær Pedersen informed me someone must have installed their software,

"because I can see that you have connected to our servers today the 18th of October 2007 at 10:39am. Do you not have a SPAMfighter toolbar in your Outlook?"

I told Mr. Pedersen that I don't use Outlook.

He responded, 10/18/2009:

Well, I can just see that someone is using this email account, with a SPAMfighter account (version 5.8.0), using Outlook 2002, on an computer running XP.

The last login on the 18th of October 2007.

The SPAMfighter account was created on the 9th of October 2007.

It has looked through 416 emails and blocked 19, of which 1 was unblocked by the user."

I once again engaged Mr. Pedersen, and told him again I do not run his software. He replied on 10/19/2007:

If this is really the case, would you mind doing the following to make sure it is not installed on your computer?

* Close Outlook / Outlook Express (yes, I know you say you dont use them)
* Download and run this program: http://download.spamfighter.com/download/remove.exe

* Restart your computer

* Don't open Outlook / Outlook Express!
* Delete the SPAMfighter folder from C:\Program Files\ (yes, I know you say you dont have SPAMfighter installed)

I will disable your SPAMfighter account and unsubscribe you from our mailing list.

If you recieve any emails from us please get back to me.

However, this whole story sounds very strange with you having the email that you do.

I reiterated that I don't do Windows. Case closed. Except:

Your SPAMfighter Pro Subscription came in on 11/01/2007

I wrote to Mr. Pedersen again, complaining about spam to my account. His response (11/05/2007):

Dear Spamfighter


I am sorry, I must have forgotten to alter the password last time.
I've done that now, so the only way anyone will be able to use this account again (and for you to recieve more mails) is if the person who made this SPAMfighter account with your email is able to log into your email account and change the password.

Ok. good. Or so I thought.

Since then, I have received the following:

Velkommen i kampen mod spam - 2008-05-04
Kører SPAMfighter som den skal? - 2008-05-11
Dit SPAMfighter Pro abonnement - 2008-05-28
Dit SPAMfighter Pro abonnement er udløbet - 2008-06-05
Bienvenue nouveau SPAMfighter - 2008-07-05
Glemte du at købe SPAMfighter Pro? - 2008-07-07
Est-ce que SPAMfighter fonctionne correctement? - 2008-07-11
Votre abonnement à SPAMfighter Pro - 2008-07-28
Votre abonnement à SPAMfighter Pro a expiré - 2008-08-05
Avez-vous oublié d'actualiser SPAMfighter Pro? - 2008-09-02
Pouvez-vous aider SPAMfighter? - 2008-09-06
¡Bienvenido a SPAMfighter! - 2009-05-18
¿Está funcionando bien SPAMfighter? - 2009-05-24
¡Actualice a SPAMfighter PRO ahora! - 2009-06-10
¿Ha olvidado actualizar a SPAMfighter Pro? - 2009-06-29
SPAMfighter no le está protegiendo más - 2009-07-23
Explíquenos cúal es su opinión y le ofrecemos un 20% de descuento - 2009-07-23
And lastly, today: Welcome to SPAMfighter! - 2009-10-14

While I am content to have had the opportunity to learn many foreign languages over the years, courtesy of spamfighter.com I have to wonder, given how poor their marketing efforts are, and their singular inability to suppress a single address from their systems, how good their actual product is. I pity the fools ...

I've sent a copy of this post to

Henrik.Sorensen@spamfighter.com, Daniel.Hjortholt@spamfighter.com, Martin.Dyring-Andersen@spamfighter.com and Martin.Thorborg@spamfighter.com

Phishing Up? Down? Which is it

Proof that perspective is everything, IBM reported phishing is down.

http://blogs.iss.net/archive/2009midyearxftarr.html
Second, phishing, especially financial phishing, dramatically declined in the first half of this year.

On the other hand ...

http://www.ukpayments.org.uk/media_centre/press_releases/-/page/732/
The UK Payments Administration's anti-fraud group Financial Fraud Action (FFA) noted that online banking fraud losses were up 55% to £39m in the first half of 2009.