On Thu, Sep 25, 2003, Shachar Shemesh wrote about ""Word of Mouth" - spam? (OT)": >... > The site baldly claims that "this is not spam", and that the email was > triggered to inform me that someone is searching for information, or is > offering information, about me. > > Now here's the catch - the searches in that site are performed according > to email address. There is someone that claims to "know me well", using > an address that I have only used once, for a specific purpose, and never > with friends! >...
I don't understand why you think the situation is any different from other "Add 3 inches" or "Help me transfer $10M" spams. The site you mentioned wants people to come to them, so they spam you and stick a line saying that "this is not spam"... So the most likely and straightforward explanation is that the owners of this site themselves created the spamming list and are pretending that "this is not spam". The very unlikely explanation is that someone else is (ab)using that site by entering other people's email addresses that that person somehow got hold of (e.g., from a spammer's list). Even if this is indeed the situation, the fact that that site sends out their emails to these addresses simply means that they found a way to knowingly spam you with "plausible deniability": they can claim that they aren't spamming - someone else entered your email... That is similar to anti-virus software spams: Anti-virus software writers know that certain worms fake "From:" addresses, but they still bounce copies of these worms. Why? Because it lets them advertise their product to millions of random people on the net, without it being labled spam, and without them having to pay a cent for the transmission of these ads. Well, do you know what? I still call those anti-virus "you have a virus!" ads spam. At some points in recent history, I was getting more of those spams than "normal" spams. -- Nadav Har'El | Thursday, Sep 25 2003, 28 Elul 5763 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |----------------------------------------- Phone: +972-53-790466, ICQ 13349191 |He who has more is not happier than he http://nadav.harel.org.il |who wants less. ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
