Spam Filtering: October 2007 Archives

As some of you may know a lot of Irish IT professionals, including myself, received a spam from Monster earlier this week.
Anyone who reads me on a regular basis would know that I am probably one of the last people you would want to spam.

In any case the story grew legs yesterday, as I received legal threats from the Monster employee, as I had published his email.
It is important that people realise that Monster did not send me legal threats - one of their employees did using a Monster email address. There's a subtle but important difference.

Yes I did publish his email. It wasn't an email sent to me directly in confidence, so I didn't see any reason why I wouldn't share it.
I've shared phishing emails in the past, so why wouldn't I shared a spam email?
I could have shared his email address and more than one person would have liked me to do so, but I couldn't stoop that low. I could have shared his mobile number, but I didn't for the same reasons.

 I naturally spoke to the company's solicitor who is also my solicitor (why pay two legal eagles?) about the posts etc., and made sure that I wasn't going to run afoul of any laws.

Yesterday afternoon I had a nice chat with Monster's PR person and then this morning I had a very long talk with the head honcho for Ireland, James Mailley.

Mr Mailley was terribly apologetic for all the hassle that this situation caused, but as I pointed out to him a simple apology would have gone a long way as opposed to the attitude that people got and of course the comments etc., here.

For an online company that deals in such a competitive market this kind of negative PR is terrible. While it may not have a longterm effect some people maybe very slow to recommend Monster in the future. Email marketing is tricky. If you do it right you will reap the benefits. Do it wrong and it can hurt!

And last night, in the midst of all the legal threats etc., my original post made it onto the frontpage of Digg!

James has given me permission to publish his email to me. I was considering just putting up a few of the key parts, but decided it would be simpler to put up the entire email:

Hi Michele
 
I appreciate you taking time to speak with me this morning on the events of the last few days.
 
As I said on the phone and wish to reiterate, I apologise for the original e-mail being sent to you and also for the amount of your time being spent dealing with this situation. Having thoroughly investigated all the aspects of the original mail, I have discovered that this was an error that occurred through the enthusiasm of a brand new recruit who did not understand the policies and practices of the company.
 
Monster has a strict policy regarding unsolicited emails, and all Monster employees are forbidden from sending such emails unless the individuals or companies in question have specifically opted in to
receive group emails of this nature.   I reiterate that the email in
question was sent by an individual in contravention of Monster's policy on unsolicited emails, and that Monster in no way authorised or condoned this behaviour. 
 
On behalf of Monster please be assured that we will do everything we can to avoid incidents of this nature occurring again in the future.
 
Kind regards
 
James

James Mailley
Sales Director
www.monster.ie

Moral of the story? Spamming is evil...

For the funnier side of things read Head Rambles' take on the story:

The Black Knight and the Monster

I think it's one of the funniest bits of writing I've seen this year! (you can digg it here)

The Monster employee who spammed a large number of Irish companies yesterday is now attempting to remove evidence of his crime.

I've just received a "recall" email from him.

Of course "recall" emails only work on Microsoft Exchange and even then have limitations. We don't use Exchange, so he can send recalls all day and all night. It won't make any difference

Earlier today I posted about three Irish spams I'd received in the morning. I didn't go into any detail, as I was busy with other things and also wanted to see how Monster would handle the situation.

The email that they sent to several hundred people included a lot of email addresses that I recognised for one reason or another. Hardly surprising as all the businesses in question belong to IT@Cork.

The email carries the "imaginative" subject line - "For the attention of your HR department!!", which is never a good sign. Of course it's even worse when you consider we actually have a page on our site dedicated to careers etc., Of course it doesn't say "please send HR spam here", so maybe it wasn't obvious enough ... Who knows?

The email itself is really pathetic:

Good Morning,
 
Firstly, I would like to clarify that we are not a recruitment agency.
 
I have just come across your company information and I wanted to introduce my self to you.  My name is John Burns and I am the business development manager for Monster in Ireland North and South.
 
Monster is the biggest online recruitment website in the World and we have a large portfolio of solutions to make your recruitment more cost affective, quicker, and easier to manage.
Click here to see our portfolio of solutions
 
Are you tired of waiting on the right candidates to respond to your advertisements? If so our unique Monster CV Database may be just what you are looking for.  Our Database gives you the freedom to search for your ideal candidates and download their CV or contact details immediately.  With over 250,000 CV’s in our Irish Database and an average of 6,600 new CV’s added every month your chances of finding the “right candidates” is exceptionally high.
 
In addition to our CV Database we have Job postings where you can post your vacancies on Monster and start receiving top candidates almost immediately, again with our average daily job views of 29,000 your vacancy is sure to be noticed and replied to.
 
I would love to make an appointment with you where I can take you through our website and show you all the different features and functions that are on offer and I can leave you with a day’s trial of our CV Database where you can try it out for your self and you never now, you may find a candidate or two that could be potential employees!
 
I look forward to hearing from you soon.
 
PS: Please accept my apologies if you recieved this Email in error.
 
 
Kind Regards,
 
John Burns
Business Development Manager
www.monster.ie
15d Gilford Road
Sandymount
Dublin 4
Tel:      +353 (0)1 xxxxxxxxxxxx
Fax:     +353 (0)1 xxxxxxxxx
Mobile: +353 (86)  xxxxxxxxxxx
 
Monthly visits average 350,000 in 2007
Over 6,700 new CVs added to the CV Database in July 2007
Best online Recruitment & Training Website in Ireland - Golden Spider Award Winners
Monster Worldwide Limited. Registeredin Ireland with number 337700.  Registered office: Hillview House, 15D Gilford Road, Sandymount, Dublin 4
 
Privileged/Confidential Information may be contained in this message. If you are not the addressee indicated in this message, (or responsible for delivery of the message to such person), you may not copy or deliver this message to anyone. In such case, you should destroy this message and kindly notify the sender by reply email. Please advise immediately if you or your employer does not consent to email for messages of this kind. Opinions, conclusions and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of the Monster Worldwide Limited shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by it. For more information on our business ethical standards please refer to our website

Note carefully that the email is not addressed to anyone in particular.

It's a general email that has been sent en masse, or in other words it's unsolicited bulk (commercial) email.

So the apology in the PS is even odder. Why would you send a bulk email spam and then try to get out of it by apologising?
And of course he has included the standard disclaimer. The fact that he can't spell doesn't help either....
His usage of capitalisation and general writing style is worryingly bad...

So what to do?

Well the obvious thing would be to contact the person who sent it, so I did. I rang him this afternoon. He didn't want to hear about my complaints and was totally unrepentant. Seemingly scraping addresses from websites and using them for marketing purposes (ie. spamming) is perfectly acceptable for Monster's staff.

That's a serious issue for any company. It's even more serious when you consider the issues they've had recently with security.

In the first instance this is unsolicited. I don't want it. My staff don't want it.
It was sent to a business email address, so unless they keep abusing our email addresses I can't do much about it legally. Under current Irish legislation they can get away with sending the first spam, but once you tell them to stop they have to. If they don't stop they're breaking the law.

However there are other things that I can do.

First off I can submit the offending email to several DNS blacklists (they're used by mail admins to block unwanted mails from entering their systems). Any other IT@Cork members who got hit by this junk need to submit the mail to spamcop et al as soon as possible (it has to be reported within 48 hours)

I could also instruct our technical staff to block all mail emanating from Monster from reaching any domains on our network, as we are perfectly entitled to block abuse of our network and email abuse is abuse whether Monster are willing to accept or not. I don't want to take that measure as yet, but it's an option I am considering.

Online recruitment is a highly competitive, but obviously lucrative, market. Can Monster afford to spam?

Maybe they need to get a hard lesson in the effects of having their smtp blocked by a major blacklist.

I've always considered spammers to be lazy, but I never thought I'd see a big company like Monster stooping this low.

Today is fast becoming "spam Monday"

So far this morning I have received unsolicited bulk email from three Irish companies:

• Fota Island resort
  
• Monster's Irish office
• Golden Spiders

Are these people aware of the amount of damage they are doing their companies by using this kind of marketing methodology?

The Monster email was particularly bad, as the person who sent it obviously doesn't know how to send mass email properly and included all the recipients in the CC field

I'm submitting the lot to Spamcop and any other blacklist I can think of

Has anyone else been getting this junk today?