3 ms·

I have the world's tiniest violin available for spammers who don't want their email addresses published. I especially loved this bit: "I was researching Automa

• josh2600 14y ago
  That's still a person who has to make a living. He could've made the point just as well while omitting personal information. The only value the identity adds is the potential for harassment (not insinuating that this is Matt's intention, only that this is the likely outcome of personal information on the internet in this day and age). I have no problem with calling out the company. I'd have no problem with the first name even. But the phone number and last name are personally identifying and unnecessarily endanger the representative.
  • Domenic_S 14y ago
    "Unnecessarily endanger the representative"? He didn't set a puppy on fire and post it to 4chan, he sent an embarrassing piece of spam. I don't think the wordpress folks are going to load up in their six-faws[1] and shoot up the guy's house. Edit: Also, he's right here -- full name and picture, even -- on Acquia's own public site: http://www.acquia.com/about-us/team/dillon-vassallo http://www.acquia.com/about-us/team/dillon-vassallo [1] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=64 http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=64
    • ineedtosleep 14y ago
      I think the point is that all personally identifiable information would be redacted. That would include company name.
  • mseebach 14y ago
    > That's still a person who has to make a living. No, that's not an excuse. Having to make a living is not a free pass to be a douche[1] to strangers with impunity. 1: And the lies - "I was researching" which then makes "I'm sorry for the cold email" a second lie - makes him a douche.
  • No1 14y ago
    If the spammer does not want his personal information revealed, he probably shouldn't be emailing it to people he doesn't know.
  • raverbashing 14y ago
    Whine whine whine Too much political correctness can be bad. If you can't handle it, then don't cold-email people. He did nothing, just published this information (last name blurred, not sure if this was done afterwards) which in itself reveals no private information of any of the parts.
• beachstartup 14y ago
  this is just as likely true as not true. enterprise sales organizations often do research on individual companies or market verticals, add entries into a big list, maybe combined with other marketing/sales people, and then do a mail merge from their CMS or other software. just because the sender may not have realized this particular corporation was a direct competitor does not mean they didn't do any research on the company or its market. perhaps sales guy was going through 200 companies that day in a list sorted on website traffic rankings, or annual revenues, or hosting provider, or any number of other bits of info. anyway, i run a startup, and i partially rely on received cold emails to get an understanding of the marketplace. we've found vendors, competitors, and VARs that we otherwise wouldn't have known existed. sorry, it's just the way it's done.
  • mitchellhislop 14y ago
    You are honestly making a case that someone did ANYTHING that resembled research, and still didn't figure out that they made their chief competitor, who is currently doing far better than them? Sorry, I just can't make that leap. The SERP for 'Automattic' is all that should have been required to move on.
    • beachstartup 14y ago
      market research and marketing is highly automated these days. this is the world you are helping to build.
    • analog 14y ago
      There's no reason why Automattic shouldn't use Drupal if it's the right tool for a particular job. Drupal projects have used Wordpress in the past, Microsoft use Linux servers etc etc.
• derleth 14y ago
  > What a bold faced lie! I've always heard this as bald-faced lie.
  • yarrel 14y ago
    It's an italic lie, surely?