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Spam

Do Something About Your Spam 73

Posted by Hemos from the dump-it-and-get-moolah dept.
Wonko42 writes "There's an article somewhere over here that talks about the Spam Recycling Center, an effort to prosecute illegal and fraudulent spammers. If you send your spam to them, they'll give you $5 credit at CDNow.com. Couldn't be a better deal, if you ask me. The results of this will be sent to CAUCE, the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, which will study the emails and figure out what evil things spammers are doing most and then send all the data to the Federal Trade Commission. "
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Do Something About Your Spam

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  • doesn't seem hard to me.
    heh.
    Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
    Danner, Jae (JD10231) jdanner@IBLI.COM
    312.236.0350 (FAX) 312.236.4092
    Billing Contact:
    Weiler, Sandy (SW6900) sweiler@IBLI.COM
    312-236-0350 (FAX) 312-236-4092

    lets whois ibli.com now. oK.

  • Re:Hmm..........for real? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If you're into obscure music ("alternative"/indie rock, electronica, etc.) you should check out www.insound.com. Great selection, most everything is $12.99, and they're running a free shipping promotional right now.

  • other domains owned by same (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    other domains owned by the same group: (according to askreggie [www.askreggie.com]

    PEACEOFMINDTRS.COM is registered to EHI

    EQUUS-ARTS.COM is registered to EHI

    PRECIOUSPUGS.COM is registered to EHI

    CHOOSEYOURMAIL.COM is registered to EHI

    EHICO.COM is registered to EHI Company


  • That reminds me... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Way back when I was on AOL and had time to kill, I decided to start something similar, only it didn't involve other people (nobody seemed interested) and I didn't have any money to give away. I saved and cross-referenced 2mb of spam (yes, 2--two--count them, 1, 2, not 1 but TWO megs of spam) in two weeks, identified two of the marketers, then harrassed them by sending them the lyrics of the great Monty Python SPAM song in every conceivable way. Those were the days. WERE. Past tense.

    I have since gotten a life and joined CAUCE and remained confident that another statistic in my legislative district would be a better way to fight the problem (i.e., one which does not involve wasting MY time over it).

  • the biggest scam of all. (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 16, 1999 @06:54PM (#1889137)
    International Business Lists (IBL), a privately held company, was
    incorporated in the State of Illinois in 1988. The company's growth
    and reputation are built on expertise in list compiling, list and
    order fulfillment services, database building and maintenance,
    profiling and the creation of customized lead generation programs.
    Located in downtown Chicago, IBL has an in-house data center
    containing IBM, mainframe and Pentium PRO processing capabilities and
    a full line of custom and packaged direct marketing software.
    IBL's customer base includes leading companies in business segments
    such as computers and computer software, telecommunications,
    insurance, financial services, communications, credit bureaus,
    telemarketing, fundraising, retail and wholesale, market research,
    membership associations and publishing.

    wow, perhaps this is the biggest scam of them all.
  • Granted spam is a pain in the ass at times (especially if you get a lot of it), but i would much rather hit 'd' and have it be gone w/o looking at it, then having someone send me a pound and a half of paper mail that goes straight from the mailbox to the trashcan, Im no "tree huggin' hippie", but we should at least attempt to be ecologically responsible.

    Nick
  • Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangster Of Love:

    >>Just how do they plan on prosecuting anyone for Spam when this company has not incurred any damages for the spam, the user or the owner of the original server did...

    In the US, all you need to do is come up with a good slogan and you can win in court. I can see it now Johnnie Cochran in civil court against a spammer "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, If they sent you an e-mail and you didn't ask, they gotta pay cash. If YOU didn't ask, THEY gotta pay cash. One last time, if you didn't ask, they gotta pay cash. Thank you, no more your honor."

    Good night Mr. Spammer. Not to mention the high ration of fraudulent spammers, and in the US telemarketers can be forced to pay civil penalties for calling you after you've told them to remove you from their list.

    LK
  • If what they say on their web pages is true, they're entirely responsible and ethical people.
    If they really are supported by CAUCE and the CDT, it's pretty likely that they're the good guys. I'm almost tempted to sign up...but not quite.
    --

  • Accually, most countries have exterdition deals, which means if you discover someone commited a crime in one country, but is currently in a different one, the contry they are in will arrest them for you, and arrange for them to get into your court system.

    I do now know if this can apply to email/the internet or now, but a good lawyer might be able to get a US citician in the US for violating a UK law under this deal.

    PS, note all the mights, and the other signs that I don't know? I'm not a lawyer, I don't understand these laws, nor the ways they do/do no apply. It would be worth persuing by someone who did though.

  • > I take that back. It would seem this is a VERY
    >CLEVER way just to get more e-mail addresses.

    Or, if we take the claims above that they only send with permission (or whatever) then eliminating the regular class of spammers is clearly in their own best interests . . .

  • They will often register two domains each acting as the authoritative nameserver for the other and each points to the other for contact names, tech/zone/billing contact. So whois is useless for finding out who is upstream from the spammer. However, packets have to get to and from the spammers web page somehow. Use mail headers to find the spammers source ip address and then remember,

    Traceroute is your friend.

    (1) Do a traceroute to the spam site and see who supplies the IP connection to the spammer.
    (2) Bitch at them for supporting spam.
    (3) If this proves futile (spammers often supply feeds to other spammers), go upstream one more node and bitch at them.
    (4) BTW, use http://www.arin.net/whois/arinwhois.html to convert unnamed IP addresses to real names of ISPs.
    (5) Most of all, have fun! tracking spammers down. Put notches on the side of your PC case for each one killed off of the 'net. Start competitions with your friends. Hold spam hunting tournaments! Spread the word! Kill the spam!
  • From the looks of it, it's only one $5 off coupon, total, no matter how many spam mail's you forward them.

    Can anyone confirm this? The site is soo slow, I am haveing a hard time working my way through it.

  • It still wouldn't be as good a deal as it looks. CDNow has pretty outrageous shipping charges and their prices aren't all that good to begin with. Not sure if there are any real good online music places right now tho in any case. www.800.com and www.buy.com have good prices, but shitty customer service. www.secondspin.com is good for used music stuff.
  • $3 for the first item is pretty unreasonable in my opinion considering it costs maybe a buck to ship a CD.
  • Well I don't know...secondspin for instance charges a hell of a lot less for basically identical service. Maybe the bigger place has higher overhead? I thought that defeated the point.
    The point is - if you save $2.50 by shopping online and then spend $3 for shipping, you might as well have gone down to your local Sam Goody or other overpriced music shop and indulged in some instant gratification. And disregarding CDNow's current sale because of the musicblvd thing, their prices really aren't that good outside of top-100 music.
  • I haven't read Mort. However most of the books about the Watch I've enjoyed immensely (e.g. Feet of Clay, Men at Arms), as well as the witches (Lords and Ladies was excellent). I suggest you give Pratchett another try. Do avoid The Last Continent though, as it's _really_ bad.

    If you want some recomendations on some more excellent (humorous) fiction mail me. My email address, backwards to avoid spam, is: ten.ecipsua.nohpyrg@tpc
  • and i already forwarded the spam i received the weekend at office to spamrecycle@ChooseYourMail.com ... now they'll have my email address in their list, uh
    --
  • CAUCE is good. I trust them. I am on their opt-in list, and have been since the beginning. Not that I want spam, but I want to make opt-in work.

    But there are too many evils abroad, and I am boycotting the RIAA (as much as can be done). So no CDNow for me.

    By the way, does the RIAA get a cut of used CDs too?

  • They were at the Mail Abuse Round Table (Score:4)

    by synaptic ( 4599 ) on Sunday May 16, 1999 @08:20PM (#1889152) Homepage
    If I remember correctly, someone from ChooseYourMail.com was at the Mail Abuse Round Table at the ISP Forum in San Diego.

    It was actually quite amusing. These guys send bulk e-mail but they claim none of it is unsolicited. The guy got up in front of a room full of postmasters and abuse administrators and tried to rationalize what they do.

    Personally, I think the company is legitimate and they are trying to do e-mail marketing to people who want it. At least this guy was at the round table and wanted to find out how they could do this without pissing off the recipients. I don't think they're going to go away any time soon unless the CDNow thing bankrupts them (I doubt it).
  • Their offices aren't too far from mine. I might go on a little investigative outing for lunch tomorrow. Hrm....

    ----------------------
    It's too bad stupidity isn't painful"

  • Most spammers are seedy types (Score:5)

    by Kiwi ( 5214 ) on Sunday May 16, 1999 @06:29PM (#1889154) Homepage Journal

    Sorry for any typographical errors. Slashdot is too heavily loaded for me to preview right now

    My general annoyance with spam is that the majority of spammers out there are seedy people. When these people are investigated on news.admin.net-abuse.email, it is often found out that these people have criminal records, or are investigated for illegal activities. Examples:

    • The "Lindsey Ontario" spammer (sends a "work at home" fraud one to everyone who posts to Usenet) has a large debt owed to the Canadian government for tax evasion.
    • "Krazy Kevin" was investigated by the FTC (or was it the FBI) for fraud. Happily, the police visiting his place have stopped him from spamming every single mailing list he can find.
    • "TCPS" (Michael Alvin) has no respect for the needs of the ISP, and continues to send pornographic spam to any and all email address he can find, with no regard for the age of the person getting the email. He is facing a lawsuit from UUNET, and a lawsuit from Juno.com for disregarding "ceast and desist" orders.
    Getting one email from someone like this is enough for me to stop what I am doing, spend the next 30 minutes finding out what ISP he used to send out his garbage, and complain to the ISPs in question. A deja.com search is also not uncommon for me.

    Messages from more legitimate corporate entities are less bothersome to me.

    Ugh! Even thinking about these spammers can ruin a perfectly good day for me!
    - Sam

  • IANAL

    I would like to think that if the spam originated in the US that you would be able to pursue the matter in the courts in district of origination of the spam. After all, the perp would be violating US laws on US soil. Of course, you'd probably have to hop the pond to deal with it.
  • The question was whether a UK citizen can have a US citizen prosecuted for violating a US law, not the UK law. I'd think it would be, but IANAL. Like you say, it should be looked into if it is happening.

    I disagree with you on the extradition though. If I, being in the US violate a UK law whilst in the US, I cannot be extradited to the UK for prosecution. The extradition happens (or not) when a crime is committed, in violation of local law, in that locality and the perpetrator proceeds to flee the country, and is caught in the other country.
  • Um.. that reply-to thing didn't come out right. What I *meant* was reply to the abuse address at any "contact" email they provide. i.e. if they say "mail me at getrichquick@hotmail.com" then you send your complaint to abuse@hotmail.com.

  • Bogus (Score:5)

    by Booker ( 6173 ) on Sunday May 16, 1999 @07:52PM (#1889158) Homepage
    1) To get your $5 off, just click the button. No spam-sending seems to be necessary, but they DO want your email address. Go figure. You sure that's worth $5?

    2) As pointed out elsewhere, these people specialize in BUILDING mailing lists and advertising profiles. Granted, it's an opt-in system, but I'm not inclined to trust them to shield me from spam.

    3) If you're going to take the time to forward your spam, forward it to the system that it originated from, and any legit reply-to addresses or web pages listed in the spam. Most services have an abuse@ email, you can visit their site to find out. Learn to read the headers to avoid the decoys. It's quite the feeling of empowerment to get a message back saying that the account has been canceled, or to visit the web page the next day and see a 404 Not Found message.

    Seems to me that what is really needed is a national database of spammers that ISPs can consult, so that the spammers can't hop from one service to another as they get discovered.

    I can't figure out why the CAUCE page links to these guys... it sure seems shady to me.
  • This is like a lot of the current SPAM legislation before the US Congress. By putting some minimal "restrictions" (such as "remove" addresses and opt-out lists), the rest of SPAM is raised to the level of a "legitimate marketing method." How many SPAMs do you get with a trailer proclaiming that, "This is a LEGITIMATE advertisement, since you can reply here to get removed from this list." NEVER MIND that the address is bogus (or deactivated), or worse yet, just another address harvesting scam!!!

    This is why CAUCE [cauce.org] is fighting to hard to defeat these SPAMMER backed bills in favor of truly outlawing unsolicited business email.

  • Don't bother sending your SPAM here. From all indications (see other notes here), this is just another scam to legitimize SPAM, and to collect valid Email addresses.
  • Hmmm... Internet underground from MSNBC... I suppose that is something like saying "Im cool.. Im hip". By saying so, they make themselves the total opposite.

    Lame I must say.

  • Maybe this is a scam to get e-mail addresses so they can spam you back trying to sell you anti-spam software.

    Pretty ingeneous... I wish they had the same type of thing for aquaintance spam... I hate when Amazon keeps sending me crap in the e-mail. Maybe they should be giving away $5 coupons for Amazon! Amazon would be giving away CDs after a while!
  • Are you getting those lame "Affordable Dental & Optical Plan" E-mails? Those damn mailings are so annoying. And whenever you try to remove, it never works.


    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • This is an excellent idea, however, given the incredible amounts of spam that are pouring into e-mail accounts, it makes you wonder how long they'll be able to afford these $5 credits to CDNow. Nevertheless, it gives people an incentive to forward crap e-mail, and get something out of it. (As if prosecuting the assholes that spam you wasn't incentive enough, now you get 5 bucks out of it too! :)

    I've noticed that many of the spam-mail I get comes with a bogus REMOVE tag, that is, when you try to remove yourself from the mailing list, you get a Mailer Daemon error message, saying that it was undeliverable because it couldn't find a host. I'm curious to see how these "spoofed" mailings will be investigated.

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • I take that back. It would seem this is a VERY CLEVER way just to get more e-mail addresses.

    See: This Insightful Comment [slashdot.org]

    The way I see it, is that this company or whatever they are, deciced to concoct a fake $5 deal (I KNEW they wouldn't be able to afford it. THINK ABOUT IT!) so people would e-mail them. In turn, they'll get about 5 billion extra e-mail addresses, Close up shop, vanish from sight, and sell the lists.

    Then again, I could be wrong, but we'll see what happens.

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • That site looks like a site that sends you junk email, sure they let you pick the categories of junk email, but it's still junk.

    A marketing tool to send legitimate spam to people who may want it.

    No thanks!
  • It seems that you only get a single, $5 coupon whether you send them spam or not. They use the anti-spam thing as a lure to get you to sign up for their "solicited email" scheme.

    Of course, if you can defeat them if you have access to a system on the internet, where you can create bogus email accounts, use them to apply for your CD-now coupon, then delete the accounts after it arrives.
  • Bilbo hits the nail squarely on the head.

    "But OUR spam is GOOD spam."

    Yeah, right.

    NO SPAMS IS GOOD SPAMS. Period.

    I get enough crap in my mailboxes from companies I actually do business with as it is.

    --Z.

  • I bet C.M.O.T. Dibbler would would have the Ankh-Morporkian spam market cornered.

  • There IS a catch... (Score:5)

    by SkurfGod ( 11388 ) on Sunday May 16, 1999 @06:35PM (#1889170)
    Interesting how these people:

    Chooseyourmail.com
    162 North Franklin
    Chicago, IL 60606
    US
    312-236-0350 (FAX) 312-236-4092

    seem to share so much with THESE people:

    International Business Lists (IBLI-DOM)
    http://www.ibli.com
    162 North Franklin Street
    Chicago, IL 60606
    US
    312.236.0350 (FAX) 312.236.4092
  • Note that they are a 'legitimate' marketer.
    They want to prosecute fraudulent spammers who are breaking all sorts of laws to begin with. Sounds good to me. Lock the spammers up. Now I'm not so happy that they're a marketing service themselves, and you can bet that they don't want to end -all- spam, just spam for illegal schemes.

    --Parity
  • I stopped reading discworld after "Mort", which was really really really really really really bad. I wish Douglas Adams would get around to writing another Dirk Gently novel, now THERE is a proper series (i.e., 2 really really really really really really good books).
  • Just how do they plan on prosecuting anyone for Spam when this company has not incurred any damages for the spam, the user or the owner of the original server did...

  • Try abuse@microsoft.com. Forward them the complete email with full headers. I know there is a live person living at that address. I don't know if they have the power to get you off, but they can at least point you in the right direction.

    -=Julian=-
    http://spamcop.net/ [spamcop.net]

  • Technically, that's http://spamcop.net/ [spamcop.net]

    These guys do seem shady, but I gave them my address a few days ago, and have not received anything unwanted from them since (I also took the opurtunity to order over $100 worth of CDs, so I guess they're laughing all the way to the bank). I did have to negotiate a minefield of "opt me in" links, but they do seem to be basically on the right side of "the law", if a bit misleading in their stated goals.

    I think it's such a marketing coup for them though. Clearly the whole recycling thing is BS - a way to attract people to their opt-in lists, and they have now been posted on slashdot and macintouch as well as CAUCE. I would never link to these guys.

    I just wonder what will become of all the spam that people send them? When people submit spam to spamcop, I treat that info as confidential, and although I dispense it to the ISP involved, I first mask as much ID info from the header as I can, particularly the recipient's address. This site says they will make those spams available for R&D. How do they know the difference between a legit spam-fighter and someone who just wants to grab all the addresses found in the spam headers??

    In general, I have found that organizations who are well-established like this marketing one are much better about removal, and opt-in management than other fly-by-night, "$20 for a whole CD of verified good email addresses!!!" types. They push the boundary as much as possible, but they generally do stay on the right side of it.

    -=Julian=-
    - SpamCop admin

  • So we get $5 off a CD for each piece of spam we send them? So could I send in 4 emails and get a free CD? Or is it only $5 off per CD? Either way I think it's a damn good deal.

    Also, did anybody notice the link to the Internet Underground [msnbc.com] on the bottom of the page? Yeah, an underground run by msnbc......I imagine it must be real cutting edge.
  • You must live in some obscure corner of the world if you are paying outrageous shipping charges. I actually just ordered a CD from them last week and I found the prices quite reasonable.
    ---
  • And I guess that box costs them nothing? Not to mention the handling costs (packing time, invoicing, etc)?
    ---
  • According to reggie, playboynorth.com (it's empty, BTW) is one of more than 50 domains owned by Microsoft. Hmm... so is EricEwing.com. Who is he?

    Mike
    --

  • The only thing that bugs me about this is:

    If it's a scam, then how'd they manage to
    get CAUCE involved in the whole thing? Or
    does CAUCE have less integrity than I thought?

  • Re:Most spammers are seedy types (Score:3)

    by IanO ( 21302 ) on Sunday May 16, 1999 @08:11PM (#1889181) Homepage
    Getting one email from someone like this is enough for me to stop what I am doing, spend the next 30 minutes finding out what ISP he used to send out his garbage, and complain to the ISPs in question. A deja.com search is also not uncommon for me.

    I used to spend alot of time tracking down the spammers but know I find that using http://spamcop.net really helps. It gets the true source of the email and even formats a message to be sent to the correct people. You can then choose who you want your message to be sent to.

    If you like the service they'll sell you an email address (yourname@spamcop.net) that is filtered and forwarded to you.

    IanO

    ------
    IanO
  • That's some swift detective work. Seems almost inhuman. How'd you make the compare that quickly? In on this somehow?

    Remember people, to keep your (real) email address safe NEVER give it out. Not even for five dollars. Even better, never use your primary email! Umm, yep. That's the ticket...
  • That`s all fine and dandy, and the site`s a
    very good idea, but it`s all very US-centric.
    Will federal laws apply to US spammers spamming
    UK accounts?


    (I once got a UK spammer investigated by the
    Data Protection Registrar for holding personal
    data (ie email addresses) on computer for
    purposes of direct mailing without a licence..)
  • Yeah, you're not alone, they did it to me, too, a couple of years ago, got 'bout a hundred or so messages in one week. I don't really remember how I got off finally, I think there was something hidden someplace on their site, that I found after dissecting it for almost a day. Too bad I didn't keep a record.

  • Cross-referencing domains (Score:3)

    by Bob-K ( 29692 ) on Sunday May 16, 1999 @07:46PM (#1889186)
    It used to be that you could cross-reference domains by taking the contact handles and doing a search on those. That showed you all the domains that a person was associated with, assuming they used the same NIC handle. Looks like this feature no longer works, or I've forgotten how to do it.

    If you go to http://www.askreggie.com you can do a similar cross-reference through a browser. It works like a regular whois, but the results let you click on the company name and it will bring up a list of domains owned by that company.

    It's also helpful to look up the domains that appear in the contact e-mail addresses, especially the admin and billing contacts.
  • Dammit. And I've been sending spam to these guys for about a week now. Here's what's on ibli.com:

    13.1 Million Business Locations

    11 Million Unique Business Phone Numbers

    120,000 New Business Incorporations Each Month

    1 Million Cottage Industry "At Home" Businesses

    1.4 Million Executives At Home Addresses

    13 Million Executive Contact Names

    I hate spam in ALL it's forms, not just email.

  • I may have spoke too soon. (Score:5)

    by |DaBuzz| ( 33869 ) on Sunday May 16, 1999 @08:43PM (#1889188)
    I emailed the people at chooseyourmail.com asking why they sell addresses and such and here is the response I got:

    We do not sell email addresses nor are we a "front" for email gathering.

    Yes we are majority owned by IBL Inc. IBL is a database marketing company that builds large scale databases for many Fortune 500 companies. IBL deals mostly with business data, not consumer, and has absolutely no data sharing with ChooseYourMail.com. We are two separate companies and we share office space and data center facilities in their Chicago headquarters.

    I can see how this could raise an eyebrow. If we did what you acuse, ISP associations, anti-spam groups, even the FTC, wouldn't support us.

    If you'd like to talk, please give me a call at your convenience.

    ** Contact Information Withheld by DaBuzz **

    I may give him a call and talk a bit about it to see what kind of "feel" I get from him. I guess we'll see in the long run.
  • it is harder to cross reference listings of domain owners. I missed that feature. He did do a little detective work or he has a better whois source than I do. I would love to know where too.

    SP
  • Please ask them (for us clueless and paranoid) why their hyperlinks look like this:

    http://www.chooseyourmail.com/e-petition.cfm?spa m=true&spamoffers=true

    And their page source is not readable?
  • funny how the focus of the article seems to rest on the shoulders of chooseyourmail.com's director, ian oxman.

    obviously for the purposes of this article he [was] elected to be the representative of the coalition theoretically involved in the 'project'. or is it that obvious? the other collaberators seem to be hanging in the aisles.

    it does produce a sinister tone. the best possible defense to dissuade cynicism and restore faith in the project would surely be to allow CAUCE to handle public relations...hmmm. CAUCE on closer investigation don't seem to be involved in the preliminary process of spam gathering at all and merely benefit from the fruits of 'chooseyourmail''s labour with the prepackaged processed spam sent direct from oxman to CAUCE and then finally to FTC.

    begging the question "will the spam recycling centres actions be monitored by a responsible anti-SPAM body such as say CAUCE?" if not, you can sure as hell bet those residual email addresses won't just be burning a hole in CDNOW's pockets.

    SPAM KING the monkey.





  • ) Dammit. And I've been sending spam to these guys
    ) for about a week now.

    Hm. I sent 'em a message (while browsing on their site) and my mail bounced.
  • Granted spam is a pain in the ass at times (especially if you get a lot of it), but i would much rather hit 'd' and have it be gone w/o looking at it, then having someone send me a pound and a half of paper mail that goes straight from the mailbox to the trashcan, Im no "tree huggin' hippie", but we should at least attempt to be ecologically responsible.
    You've been suckered by Spammer Big Lie #573a -- "Spam Is Like Paper Junk Mail" and its companion #573b -- "Spam Saves Trees".

    The bottom-line truth is: When somebody sends paper junk mail, they pay; when somebody sends spam, you pay. For this reason, paper junk mail is self-limiting -- advertisers will only pay for so much of it, especially if it gets a low response rate. Spam, if not punished, will grow indefinitely until it makes e-mail unusable.

  • Notice how the company doing this is also a spammer?

    They call themselves a responsible opt-in spammer, and they don't ask for demographics. But this seems like a great way to harvest good email addresses.

    Would it be wrong to forward them the spam with all your details faked so they couldn't add you to thier spam mailing list? :-) :-)

  • Quick note... (Score:3)

    by jdfalk ( 51051 ) on Monday May 17, 1999 @12:58AM (#1889195) Homepage
    Hi -- I'm on the CAUCE Board of Directors (check the web page to be sure, there are a lot of idjits out there.) I'm also the postmaster. In this message, I'm speaking on behalf of the Coalition.

    The recycling center is going to store the submissions that they receive so that we can do some statistical analysis. Please don't just randomly send stuff to CAUCE addresses, though, 'cause that just gets you e-mail from me saying "please stop."
  • I'm CAUCE's PR droid, better known as moz@cauce.org or press@cauce.org.

    (Short version of this post: We're involved in the PR, we didn't want to lead the PR, we trust Ian to do the right thing and want to promote ethical e-mail marketing while stopping spam.)

    I've been talking with ChooseYourMail's PR person for months about the SRC, and I had final right of signoff on the release before it went out. I also sent the release out to the sooper-sekrit CAUCE media mailing list. Since I do CAUCE media relations on a pro-bono basis, in between paying clients, I'm always happy to let somebody else do the heavy lifting when it comes to release writing and the like. We just make sure we have final approval.

    We trust Ian and his people based on personal relationships and our experience with them over time. That, combined with CAUCE's belief that it's important to promote e-mail marketing efforts in which there's a willing sender and a willing recipient, got us involved in SRC. Ian asked us for input in the planning stages and incorporated some of our ideas and addressed some of our concerns.

    Since it's all Ian's idea and his $$$ behind the SRC, he's been the focus of most of the articles. I've talked to some reporters as well, but RL pressures have made it difficult for some reporters to get ahold of me for comment. Hence, we haven't been as well-represented in some of the media coverage as some might like, and it might give the impression to some that ChooseYourMail has been attempting to hog the PR. That's not true, and I have the reporter referrals from Ian's PR person to prove it.

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