Wednesday, October 14, 2009

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



3 comments:

Spamfighter said...

Follow-up #1 from the CEO:

Calling us "SPAMMERS" is in any case unfair and I think you know that is true.
We have not send you emails containing "spam" or offers of 3 party software, Viagra or anything like that.
What we may be guilty in is having a minor hole in our signup, but the mails sent to you contained valid information our product alone and for the most part reaching out if there was any issue with the product.

Spamfighter said...

follow-up #2 from the CEO:

This is not in anyway unsolicited.
If I wrote a mail to a wrong email address, is that spam too ?
you are arguing from a theoretically point of view and not from the intention the mail from sent to "this email address".

Besides from this, you are displaying email address on the blog knowingly that they will be picked up by search engines and used for spam.
Now we can talk about morality of this issue.

Spamfighter said...

folloow-=up #3 from the CEO:

Sorry, but in this case you are on a theoretical lane.
I have explained to you what happen, I have apologized and you know that its true.
That you keep this up is purely harassment when you know better.