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I've been getting more spam lately from "legitimate" companies. One of my email addresses leaked from a major open source project I corresponded with. Harvest

I've been getting more spam lately from "legitimate" companies. One of my email addresses leaked from a major open source project I corresponded with. Harvesters found it and now sell it to every small business and entrepreneur marketer you can think of. I get spam from CDNs, off-shoring companies, SEO/SEM, marketing, you name it. Lots of them use sketchy services like reply.io to make it seem like a real person sent the email. And then another that looks like a reply to the first when you don't respond. And then another and another. Like Katie Malone at HawkSEM.com who 'personally' spammed me another 'reply' today. Essentially, folks like reply.io and similar automate the process of repeat spamming. Even their tag line is "Send Cold Emails That Feel Warm". Here's a reality check for you: sending "cold emails" to a list of email addresses you bought makes you a spammer. Even if you try to make them appear personal. The giveaway is the tracking image (usually hidden or 1px by 1px white of course) and tracking links in every email so they can track whether you opened it and whether you clicked anything along with the unsubscribe link at the bottom. Except they don't label it as unsubscribe. It says "If you don't want to get any more emails from me, just let me know." with 'just let me know' as a link. Be sure to mark every email like this you receive as spam so you don't get any more and so their reputation decreases enough to route all of this spam to everyone's spam folders.

Nagyman 10y ago
This has absolutely picked up recently! It doesn't help their brand in my case, as I put them into the "Overly Aggressive Vendor" folder for future reference when I'm actually looking at purchasing services. Those reply.io emails that look like they're from a real person are a grey area of marketing. I think it's deceptive and places undue social pressure to reply. Sometimes I do reply, but only when I get annoyed. In such cases, I turn the tables and start trying to sell them adventure travel (G Adventures). Sadly, we also use Criteo; thankfully adblockers block Tealium tag manager by default anyway. When I saw OPs article screenshots, I actually suspected that Criteo had harvested the email address from the Forgot Your Password screen. This isn't uncommon – VE Interactive (I've mentioned them before), reads forms for email address fields and onBlur, they capture it and send marketing emails later. I _think_ this type of behaviour is supposed to be limited to cart abandonment situations, but I'll bet an incorrectly configured tag would target all forms.
- JohnTHaller 10y ago
  When I started getting these, I called out the companies that did it. Kisi (getkisi.com) spammed me a few times and I called them out on it on Twitter with this tweet: "Hey @KISI - Spamming harvested emails is going to get your startup the wrong kind of attention." Their response was to block me. And continue to spam me. I can't imagine doing business with a company like that.
- gorhill 10y ago
  > thankfully adblockers block Tealium tag manager by default anyway Most ad blocker do not block Tealium by default. For blockers such as Adblock Plus or AdBlock, one must explicitly enable EasyPrivacy (which is enabled by default in uBlock Origin).
davidgerard 10y ago
>Be sure to mark every email like this you receive as spam so you don't get any more and so their reputation decreases enough to route all of this spam to everyone's spam folders. This really works, too.
userbinator 10y ago
I've always pondered sending the following curt response to this type of not-quite-really-spammy (as in Viagra-ads) spam: Fuck off. ...or something even more offensive for greater catharsis, but then I worry it will just cause them to send even more, knowing that the address is "live".
- __david__ 10y ago
  Since I run my own mailserver, I can put in filters to give errors out at the SMTP level (rather than bounces), so I have stuff like this in my access file for egregious spammers (from legit companies): <some_email> ERROR:550 You've been banned from sending spam to this address, spamming bastard!! There's a whole bunch and the swearing ramps up and down based on the egregiousness of the spamming. I have no idea if anyone has ever seen these messages (probably not), but I really hope some day someone does :-). And yeah, swearing at spambots is oddly cathartic.
- dawnerd 10y ago
  I do that but only with recruiters from LinkedIn. It's hilarious when they get really upset and either call to curse at me or send a bunch of angry emails. Emails of course just get forwarded to their main contact. That'll teach them.
  - justinclift 10y ago
    The bad spam recruiters seem to have found GitHub in the last few weeks. eg not the "normal" recruiters who have a clue, but the ones who just email everything through regardless "just in case". I had a lengthy discussion with one of the managing directors (Nick Rapley) of such an organisation ("RBW Consulting LLP" here in the UK) recently. He goes out of his way to defend their approach, as if the anti-spam laws don't apply to his line of business. Just because some small % of people might actually be convinced to say Yes. (that is literally the same justification every other spammer uses) Ironically... he told me to stop wasting his time. Like... hello, pot calling kettle black. :/

Nagyman 10y ago

This has absolutely picked up recently! It doesn't help their brand in my case, as I put them into the "Overly Aggressive Vendor" folder for future reference when I'm actually looking at purchasing services. Those reply.io emails that look like they're from a real person are a grey area of marketing. I think it's deceptive and places undue social pressure to reply. Sometimes I do reply, but only when I get annoyed. In such cases, I turn the tables and start trying to sell them adventure travel (G Adventures). Sadly, we also use Criteo; thankfully adblockers block Tealium tag manager by default anyway. When I saw OPs article screenshots, I actually suspected that Criteo had harvested the email address from the Forgot Your Password screen. This isn't uncommon – VE Interactive (I've mentioned them before), reads forms for email address fields and onBlur, they capture it and send marketing emails later. I _think_ this type of behaviour is supposed to be limited to cart abandonment situations, but I'll bet an incorrectly configured tag would target all forms.

JohnTHaller 10y ago
When I started getting these, I called out the companies that did it. Kisi (getkisi.com) spammed me a few times and I called them out on it on Twitter with this tweet: "Hey @KISI - Spamming harvested emails is going to get your startup the wrong kind of attention." Their response was to block me. And continue to spam me. I can't imagine doing business with a company like that.
gorhill 10y ago
> thankfully adblockers block Tealium tag manager by default anyway Most ad blocker do not block Tealium by default. For blockers such as Adblock Plus or AdBlock, one must explicitly enable EasyPrivacy (which is enabled by default in uBlock Origin).

davidgerard 10y ago

>Be sure to mark every email like this you receive as spam so you don't get any more and so their reputation decreases enough to route all of this spam to everyone's spam folders. This really works, too.

userbinator 10y ago

I've always pondered sending the following curt response to this type of not-quite-really-spammy (as in Viagra-ads) spam: Fuck off. ...or something even more offensive for greater catharsis, but then I worry it will just cause them to send even more, knowing that the address is "live".

__david__ 10y ago
Since I run my own mailserver, I can put in filters to give errors out at the SMTP level (rather than bounces), so I have stuff like this in my access file for egregious spammers (from legit companies): <some_email> ERROR:550 You've been banned from sending spam to this address, spamming bastard!! There's a whole bunch and the swearing ramps up and down based on the egregiousness of the spamming. I have no idea if anyone has ever seen these messages (probably not), but I really hope some day someone does :-). And yeah, swearing at spambots is oddly cathartic.
dawnerd 10y ago
I do that but only with recruiters from LinkedIn. It's hilarious when they get really upset and either call to curse at me or send a bunch of angry emails. Emails of course just get forwarded to their main contact. That'll teach them.
- justinclift 10y ago
  The bad spam recruiters seem to have found GitHub in the last few weeks. eg not the "normal" recruiters who have a clue, but the ones who just email everything through regardless "just in case". I had a lengthy discussion with one of the managing directors (Nick Rapley) of such an organisation ("RBW Consulting LLP" here in the UK) recently. He goes out of his way to defend their approach, as if the anti-spam laws don't apply to his line of business. Just because some small % of people might actually be convinced to say Yes. (that is literally the same justification every other spammer uses) Ironically... he told me to stop wasting his time. Like... hello, pot calling kettle black. :/