Spammers, Telemarketers Stoop to New Lows

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"My wife was at a mall about a year ago when she ran across one of those groups who were trying to sign people up for a Visa credit card. Since she didn't yet have a credit card, she decided she'd fill out the form. She had everything filled out and was ready to sign it when she noticed the draconian fine print that essentially promised that they would sell her personal data to anyone they could, so instead of signing the form she said 'no thanks' and tossed it in the garbage. That was a mistake she has been made to regret. Almost immediately SPAM to her university email address went from 0 to 20 a day, and has been slowly increasing since. Soon we started to receive a large number of telemarketing calls to our home (where before we had received almost none). Junk mail addressed to her went through the roof. It wasn't until the Visa card arrived addressed to her that we knew what had happened." It appears that someone fished this woman's application out of the garbage and submitted this anyways, without a signature. How is something like this even close to being legal?

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And people wonder where SPAM comes from? Even if you don't fill out these things, you still get it. I didn't know people would lower themselves to this level.

Originally posted on Slashdot

It seems like you can't fill out any type of form anymore without some kind of legal clause trying to beat the no call list. Even something as simple as getting a free pack of soda has some clause that Company X can call you if you want anything....

I guess goes without saying that nothing in this world is truly free...

and yet thay say that the best things in life are...
that really speeks for its self than doesant it..


Nightfalls_Girl

Yes, this unfortunately is a common occurance.

Here are other places that you will find similar SPAM starters:
1) Fill out this form to win a car - seen at every mall across America and I'm sure across the world.
2) Sign up for our mailer (Guess, Abercrombie, etc.)
3) Win a vacation!! - Seen everywhere
4) Throw in your business card for a free lunch (and 30 - 100 SPAM e-mails sent to the e-mail address on your business card)
5) Please take our survey on customer satisfaction. A major hotel got **** for selling this info to marketers
6) DMV - Yes, the division of motor vehicles will gladly sell all of the info they have on you to anyone who is willing to buy it. Fortunately, you can submit a form to stop this from happening. Visit the DMV site for your state to make it happen (yes, it does work. i have done it myself).
7) As noted, credit card companies are the ultimate information whores. They will sell and send you just about anything. There is an opt out option for most but you have to ask and it takes about 6 weeks to take effect.

Anyway, there are others but these seem to be the most common. have fun trying to keep your info private folks. It shouldn't be this hard but unfortunately it is.

I had a problem with spam whereby I complained about junk text messages, and instead of stopping those the company added the email address I used to complain with to their mailing list, so I got more junk from them! Every time I emailed to say "stop sending me this rubbish", they just kept adding me to their list instead of removing me.

how about when you sign a petition to show support for some cause and some unbathed persons having carnal knowledge of their maternal parents, sell the information.

i wonder how many are going to buy the no-call list...oouu! fresh numbers!

wouldnt work.

one of my teachers used to get sent all these forms from the people from American Express (credit cards) so he used to fill them out correctly for his dog.
The people accuilly called him up wondering if thay could speek to the dog, and if he still wonted the card.


Nightfalls_Girl

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Originally posted here by pwaring
I had a problem with spam whereby I complained about junk text messages, and instead of stopping those the company added the email address I used to complain with to their mailing list, so I got more junk from them! Every time I emailed to say "stop sending me this rubbish", they just kept adding me to their list instead of removing me.

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The 'click this to stop recieving mail' on spam mail is ALWAYS a ploy to get you to verify that the email the mail was sent to exists. Spammers often try random names and only add those to a list that reply. Never click that link. It never works.

All this talk of credit cards reminds me of this.

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Originally posted here by Striek


The 'click this to stop recieving mail' on spam mail is ALWAYS a ploy to get you to verify that the email the mail was sent to exists. Spammers often try random names and only add those to a list that reply. Never click that link. It never works.

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No, this was from a proper company (i.e it wasn't a scam, just annoying) and I actually went to their web site and sent them an email telling them to stop sending me stuff. If you're dealing with a reputable company who have accidentely (or purposely) added you to their mailing list then the link to remove you from the list usually works (I know because I've run a mailing list for a company).

Spam is illegal, saddly, not enforced. It's called "cost-spending."
I have come to the conclusion that people are out to just bother me since I get e-mails like this:

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Subject: xxhh Make ur mansword bihhggg
Message:
e-t
n-o
l-d
a-a
r-y
g
e

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No link to the product, just 2 of these, every day, from the same spammer who I cannot block becase they have a bot setup to register a random Yahoo account every day.

I recommend getting a separate hotmail or yahoo mail account to use whenever you sign up for anything. If someone decides to send you 6Mb of junk, you will never have to look at it and the site where you got the account from will either delete it all or tell you that you've exceeded your limit. When this happens, I just go there real quick, hit the "select all" button and delete it all myself. No need for sometimes expensive spam protection programs that mostly don't work!

I do use seperate e-mail accounts, what bother sme is the one that gets spammed is personal, and it's been released to no websites.

Most anti-spam programs do not work, they filter out wanted e-mails, and some (ie AOLs) spam you more.

And let us not forget our own universities selling our information. Case in point, when I attended the University of Central Florida I gave them an email address for receiving various information from the school as it came out. As a rule i never enter correct information regarding myself online, and previously I had never used that account along with my real name. Well, a few weeks into the semester i started getting spam with my name in the subject line, about half of it junk for student credit cards! There was also quite a bit for satellite television service. A few months later, the same tv service began calling my parents house, also information I had to give to the school! Before that school I had never gotten spam in that account, nor solicitous phone calls at my parents house. I thought it was very unfortunate that my own university had literally sold me out. Thx lots ucf.

Lucky for me, all Universities around me don't do things like that -- I looked into it.

Ah the joys of Canada life :D.

Another thing you can do, for those who have viable internet email with up to 5 accounts is to never use your master account as email. What you do is go to that ISP's member service page and log in using your master account, then going into Account Management or whatever, and make another email account using one of the multiple accounts you have. This way, if you ever start getting spam, just change that subaccount to something else. I've done this many times when it gets out of hand and a few months later, I go back and try the email again. They want to spam you with unwanted and unsolicited email but they won't keep you around if mail keeps getting bounced back to them.

LOL, I used to work for a Telemarketing company. I made about 800 phone calls in one day. It was wild. Because out of 800 about 7 people will donate or buy something. The others cuss you out, make up stories, whatever. That was the most amusing part of it. Given I only did it for about 4 months during college, it was an experiance.
I think that the best way to get rid of spam mail in you e-mail is set the filter to Exclusive, I know hotmail has this, but I dont think yahoo does. I never used anything other that Outlook and hotmail. :flip: spam. Occasionaly one will slip through and they are always telling me I've won a million dollars or "Kris get pr0n now! click here!" :)

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Originally posted here by Vorlin
They want to spam you with unwanted and unsolicited email but they won't keep you around if mail keeps getting bounced back to them.

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True...but in most instances the mail isn't getting bounced back to them. Seeing as they normally use a dodgy SMTP server, or, as Drakain Zeil said, use bots to create dodgy accounts daily and spam us all to hell! :)


All this spam getting bounced around pointlessly actually "DDoS'd" the leading two Australian ISP's mail servers, Telstra and Optus....

did it come with free gator software?

Anoter thing I've just thought of is www.dot.tk's e-mail forwarding, just register an account and it will send any mail recived there to the new adress, ex. "[email protected]" >> "[email protected]", however, I'm not too sure about relyablity... however if you get spamed too much just drop the adress and change it.

This http://www.spamgourmet.com/ is a very handy free service it will forward messages to your addy for a set # so you get the confirmation or what you wanted and then it just eats all the crap that comes after.