Hi,
Sorry for this massage being somewhat off topic in here ...
Francois PIETTE wrote:
Sure their privacy policy of the day say they won't spam, but it also
says We reserve the right to change our privacy policy at any time
If they change their policy, this would apply only to the data they
collected after their change.
In a perfect world, that's how it would work. The way they usually do it
is to hide somewhere on their site an note saying that the new terms
apply to all users but you can opt out of the data sharing. Some even
require you to send a snail mail letter to their 'office' in Aruba or
Beijing ...
They also generally sell their lists to resellers immediately after they
announce the policy change (when not before!) so that as few as possible
will have a chance to 'opt out' before the sale is completed.
In this particular case:
http://www.frappr.com/?a=docsection=privacy
The relevant part is : If we are going to use users' personally
identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the
time of collection, we will notify users by placing a notice on our site
Another case of 'If' that means 'When' ...
Anyway, the mailing list is indexed by google, so your email is already
referenced by google. Search for a part of a message you wrote, for example
but this part of DNS is still some kind (use double quotes in google
search to do an exact search) and you get it
(http://www.google.fr/search?num=100hl=frrls=GGLC%2CGGLC%3A1970-01%2CGGLC%3Afrq=%22but+this+part+of+DNS+is+still+some+kind%22).
You can aslo search for your email, either [EMAIL PROTECTED] or erv at
sympatico.ca and you find some references. You are well known on the
internet. I'm sure you already receive a lot of spam as I do (hundreds of
messages each single day).
First of all, if you get that much spam, do yourself a favor and add
some spam filtering to your mail account. Getting your daily email will
be a much better experience.
There are different levels of spam. Pill / porn / mortgage / stock scams
peddlers are the ones using spiders running on hijacked machines to
gather emails the way you describe and honestly, They don't bother me
much since their crap is easy to filter and will be deleted before ever
reaching my machine. Their main effect is to make the mail server drive
run slightly hotter and somewhat delay delivery for legitimate mails.
Those that create more of a problem are the semi legitimate ones who
navigate the gray area between spammy spam and legitimate lists.
To operate legally or at least in a less contentious way, these lists
don't use spider gathered mails and require each mail address they get
from their 'partners' for supposedly 'opt in' inclusion in their lists
to have a verifiable (not forged) dated IP.
By inviting us, you implicitly gave them the dated IP, and the clear
intent of your action was to have them send an email to the addresses
you entered. It's more than enough for the 'opt-in' list resellers. I
highly suspect Frappr is / will soon be one of those 'partners', since
that's a major source of revenue for such sites (they claim to have more
than a million users. If true, we're talking about a sizable amount of
money here).
If in 2 or 3 months, I start getting various 'newsletters', I won't be
able to do anything about it, since they'll have a verifiable, non
forged IP / date for my 'registration'. That's the main purpose behind
these 'email this page to / invite a friend' links. They like them a
lot, since complaining about it (as I'm doing now) seems quite rude and
most people will not do it.
Typically, lists users (such as Mypoints, Commission Junction ...) are
'legitimate businesses' whose messages are sent to a mix of recipients
where some really requested them but most were bought from 'partners'
who used a handful of tricks to get their 'consent'.
Since the messages tend to be spammy but can arguably result in lots of
false positives, their domains end up being whitelisted, thus rendering
filtering impractical. They might send only 5% of all spam, but they
often end up being 50% of spam that arrives in a properly filtered mail
box, and that's why they are an annoyance.
The 'opt in' you made with our email will not double my spam intake ;-)
yet, people like me who keep their addresses for a long period of time
(I got this one in 96), have to be careful and adequately protect them
so that they remains usable, including to receive valuable informations
from lists such as this one.
Regards,
Eric.
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.overbyte.be
- Original Message -
From: Eric Montréal [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: ICS support mailing twsocket@elists.org
Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2006 4:15 PM
Subject: Re: [twsocket] ICS and MidWare Frappr group
Francois PIETTE wrote:
I added custom pins to the Frappr ICS and MidWare group
(http://www.frappr.com/icsandmidware). Using those pins, you can tell
