CAUCE

I need a job, and just got some spiffy email about a new job site!

Posted on behalf of: Neil Schwartzman, Executive Director CAUCE

A friend of mine just wrote to me about a new service called NotchUp.com so I looked them up on DomainTools.

Now, why would a company obfuscate their domain registration? I can't think of a good reason why. That isn't to say that NotchUp.com is not a fine upstanding company, I don't know, but having correct and open information in your domain registration means you are taking responsibility for your online conduct.

Unemployed folks, and others looking to change jobs should be very careful when joining a job recruitment site; they can be real hornet's nest. For one, job applicants are giving out a tremendous amount of personal data that can be misused to the ends of personal identity theft. As well, many of them are not worth the bother, or can be out-and-out malicious.

Another friend was the victim of a drive-by virus-infected when someone ostensibly reached out to him about a VP-level job, one for which he was suitable (he's a sales guy, so it might not have been entirely targeted).

The CAUCE advice?

• Stick with the biggies - to name a few; Linkedin, Monster, Workopolis, Craigslist
• Check out new companies and new job sites from the comfort of your own browser!
• Run the domain through DomainTools
• Get yourself a copy of the great tool from McAfee Site Advisor, a plug-in that works for both Internet Explorer and Firefox, and check out their reviews.
• Use the Alexa Firefox plug-in to check out if the site has a reasonable amount of traffic.
• Use your favourite search engine on the name and the domain name of any potential job site or employer. Then search again and add the qualifier + spam. Or + scam
• Never respond to Unsolicited email
• If the job seems too good to be true, (especially if you are desperate!), stay away!

For example, LinkedIn currently has many 'work at home' jobs touted, money-laundering for 419 and phish-stolen money. Getting involved in those schemes helps sustain spamming, and you can be arrested. (LinkedIn are doing a fine job of deleting these as fast as they come in, but the bad guys slip through, nevertheless)

Good luck with your job search, don't let the bad guys swindle you!

Letter to the Editor: In Support of The Spamhaus Project

A letter to the editor sent to Ken Magill of Direct News / Magilla Marketing
* Reposted with Permission from Neil's Personal Blog.

Ken,

Thank-you for your April 1 column 'Anonymous Group Takes Aim at Spamhaus', it is no joke.

Consider for a moment what the circumstance for the email world would be, were the people behind Online Marketing Advocacy Group to be successful in putting The Spamhaus Project out of business.

Literally hundreds of millions of user inboxes would be left unprotected. Spam would flow, unabated, into them. How then, would users react? I imagine a goodly portion of them would simply give up on the medium. We have already seen evidence of users either migrating to social networking closed gardens or dumping email altogether, how much more tempting will these alternates be in such a world?

ISPs would scramble to put other measures into place, using DNSBLs far more draconian those of Spamhaus.

Legitimate marketers will be severely affected, with a far, far lessened ability to get their messages delivered, or actually seen, amidst the blizzard of spam.

Is a listing on Spamhaus onerous enough to sue the company out of existence? I imagine it must be for some of the highest degree of frustration to be listed at Spamhaus. However, in both my personal and professional life I have never experienced anything but professionalism and ease of use with their products. The clients I have encountered with Spamhaus listings who made the appropriate changes were quickly delisted, plain and simple as that.

I expect of the tens of thousands of legitimate marketers who are not listed at present, some may have had some unfortunate intersection with Spamhaus, and had to change their practices. At present, they are humming along happily. To them I ask - do you like getting your mail to the inbox of your subscribers? Then do not sit on your hands, and allow this pernicious, short-sighted initiative to move forward an inch without a challenge:

Contribute to Spamhaus in any way possible; they surely have a legal defense fund to fight against this spurious attack, pony up some money!

Strictly follow industry guidelines - the Messaging Anti-abuse Working Group has several available through their website (including a terrific new paper on email authentication, check it out - all these documents have been developed with the full participation of senders, receivers, CAUCE and Spamhaus associates.

Agitate in industry associations like the DMA and ESPC to very publicly voice and undertake initiatives against the actions of the cowardly Online Marketing Advocacy Group and indeed for The Spamhaus Project. This may cause some internal pain to these groups. It is my understanding that some of their members, in fact, very vocal members are the main supporters of this attack-dog group. Take a stance, divest yourselves of these sectors of the industry that do nobody any good, far least, the ever-loving recipient of email

Be forewarned, if you don't take an active stance now, today, and these vile back-room people are successful, you will doubtlessly wish you had done so. It will hurt your business, and in these business climes, I'd say that in and of itself is a very brave stance indeed. Good luck with that.

--
Neil Schwartzman
Executive Director
CAUCE: The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email

Ralsky indictment is good news for all email users

by J.D. Falk

I've always maintained that spam does not make one great, but Al Ralsky kept a relatively high profile for long enough that his unwelcome intrusions into our inboxes — and our friends' inboxes, and our parents' inboxes, and our children's inboxes — will be long remembered.

Today the entire email industry is cheering the arrest and indictment of Ralsky and his gang, which was reported in the Detroit Free Press this morning. It's obviously good news for anti-spammers, who have been clamoring for prosecutions of illegal spamming activity for more than a decade. But it's also wonderful news for the email marketing industry, which has been trying to show the world that they aren't spammers. Now, the marketers can point to Ralsky's illegal activities and state with one voice: "we do not do these awful things."

But I think the marketers have to ask themselves: is there anything Ralsky was doing which isn't illegal per se, but might still be considered spam-like in the eyes of your subscribers? Perhaps a subject line which is only slightly misleading — not enough to violate CAN-SPAM, but enough to violate the trust your subscribers have in your brand. Perhaps treating opt-in as a license to blast them over and over, until your message falls on deaf ears.

If a sender acts like a spammer, even if they aren't bad enough to get arrested, how different are they from Al Ralsky and his ilk?

And likewise, I think the anti-spammers have to consider whether following "big name" spammers is worth the effort. It seems certain that for every high-profile blowhard like Ralsky, there's another dozen who are just as prolific — but, like most other criminals, never seek attention.

This is a great triumph for all who want to preserve email as a viable communications medium. We congratulate the United States Department of Justice and the FBI for their impressive work, and the Spamhaus Project for keeping a close eye on Ralsky's activities for so long.

But this is not the end of spam; far from it.

This article was also published by Return Path.

CAUCE offers advice on Katrina relief donations

Did you get e-mail asking you to contribute to Katrina relief? Unfortunately, many such requests are fraudulent.

After every natural disaster in recent years, spammers have always sent fake appeals, preying on the good intentions of generous Americans. It happened after the tsunami, and it was sadly predictable that it would happen now.

FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has a web page listing reputable organizations accepting donations. We encourage you to check their list before donating to a charity that you're not already familiar with.

CAUCE offers advice on Tsunami relief donations

Did you get spam asking you to contribute to Tsunami relief? Unfortunately, it was probably fraudulent.

After every natural disaster in recent years, spammers have always sent fake appeals, preying on the good intentions of generous Americans. Rather than responding to spam, CAUCE encourages its members and friends to contribute to any of these well-established organizations that have Tsunami relief projects active in Asia:

• Oxfam America
• Red Cross
• Unicef