March 12th, 2007
Want to gripe at a spammer? Here's one you can call.
Here's something you don't get everyday: spam with a working phone number and a picture of the spammer (see partial screenshot, left). If you're fed up with spam and want to complain to someone about it, how better to get it off your chest than to tell a spammer — any spammer — what you think of spamming practices. After all, wouldn't it make you feel better if you had a shot at changing at least one spammer's mind?
Now is your chance.
In fairness to the spammer in this case, spam is one of those e-mail classifications where beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Much the same way one man's junk is another man's pleasure, what is viewed as spam by some is not necessarily viewed as spam by others. Unsolicited commercial email (UCE) is considered by many (including me) to be a form of spam. UCE is the sort of e-mail where someone or some business that's ultimately interested in your money solicits you via e-mail without having had a prior business relationship with you (there are non-commercial forms of spam as well).
Before Congress enacted the Can Spam act, there were forms of anti-spam legislation that required senders of UCE to have such prior business relationships with recipients before e-mail solicitations could be sent. But the various marketing lobbies whose constituents were gravely threatened by the prospect of not being able to send us junk mail managed to weild their influence the and result is a fairly toothless law. Instead of requiring some prior business relationship with recipients, senders of UCE must provide a way for recipients to opt-out. The marketers got their way. There are enough loopholes in the law that it wouldn't require much in the way of creative thinking in order for a spammer to keep sending you UCE without breaking the law (even though you may have opted-out of one or more of his or her e-mail lists).
As a result, we're left to our own devices to solve the problem. We can run anti-spam solutions. But they're invariably imperfect solutions (if you develop one of these solutions, please do not contact me to convince me otherwise). In the course of blocking bad mail, they also occasionally block the good mail too (a false positive). As a result, we have three choices: ease up the blocking rules (which let's more spam into our inboxes), regularly check the spam (junk mail) folder to make sure it hasn't absconded with some good mail (why bother having an anti-spam solution at all if you have to do this), or don't check the spam folder at all and accept the false positives as collateral damage (not a good idea).
Although it's not mutually exclusive to the other three choices, now, thanks to a spam I received this morning, you have a fourth remedy. It may not affect the volume of spam in your inbox. But it might make you feel better to know you've done your part to battle spam. Although this particular UCE item had an unsubscribe link (putting it in compliance with the Can Spam Act), it was, after all, unsolicited. In other words, to me, it was spam. The mail in question came from PresentationExcellence.com, a company with which I have no prior relationship (business or otherwise) and it was a solicitation to attend a workshop being taught by Jerry Cahn.
In addition having a picture of the affable-looking Cahn (above left), the e-mail contains a mini-resume in hopes of convincing us of his credibility and qualifications to run the workshop. He's got a Ph.D. as well as his Juris Doctor (law degree) and has held C-level positions for a couple of organizations. He seems likes smart guy. That is, until you call him, which I did since he also provided his phone number on the spam. I have no reservations about publishing it here since the number is also on his Web site. It's 1-646-827-0009.
After dialing the number, I was actually surprised to hear the phone get answered "Jerry Cahn." It was him in the flesh. The reason I called is because I'm always interested in knowing how I end on these e-mail lists. OK, I'm obsessed with the question. It's probably because I secretly fantasize about finding the person who sold my address to Cahn after harvesting it (along with a bunch of others) from the Internet and, well, we won't go there. Or maybe Cahn harvested it. So I asked Cahn point blank "Where did you get my address from?" I could have asked the question in a slightly different way: "What &$%^#!* right do you #$%^#@ have to *%^$#)(@ invade my #$@^%* inbox?" Yes. When you take liberties with my inbox, it really gets under my skin.
Cahn didn't have an answer. "Maybe you took one of our seminars before" said Cahn. Nope. Cahn offered to take me off the list, took down my number, and said he'd get back to me after he found out. That was it. For a guy as smart and educated as he is, I hung up the phone wondering how it could be that he had no other plausible explanation to offer. Surely, if he's the one answering his phone, then he's also got his hands in most other if not all aspects of his business and he should have some idea of how his e-mail lists are sourced (as a sidebar, I believe this to be one of the teeth missing in legislation; lack of audit trails on this data). Most of the business day has passed without getting a call back. I'm not surprised. Spammers have no compunction about invading your privacy and time whenever and however they feel like doing it. But when you actually invade theirs, they not nearly as interested in responding to you as they would be if you had your credit card out.
So, here's my message to Mr. Cahn: The reason I'm on your list is because you or someone you bought the list from harvested it from the Internet or another list, maybe one that was for sale. If my email address appeared somewhere in an intended context — for example here on ZDNet as a means of contacting me about what I've written or on a list that I actually belong on (eg: the list of customers to some on-line merchant) — I can assure you that the existence of my e-mail address on your list is several light years away from any of those legitimate contexts. I'm rather certain the same is true of the other e-mail addresses on your lists. Thank you for never putting my e-mail address on another one of your correspondences again and for not redistributing my e-mail address to others.
Since there's a chance that your name could end up on Mr. Cahn's e-mail list, my suggestion is to be proactive about it by beating him to the punch. After all, since the law doesn't require you to have a pre-existing relationship with Mr. Cahn before you can spam him, why not work the law to your advantage (just make sure you leave instructions on how to prevent further transmissions, like "to unsubscribe, reply with unsubscribe in the subject line."). Let Cahn know you don't want to receive any e-mail from him. Although I didn't check, he should be OK with this. Since he has no problems reaching out to people he doesn't know, why would he object to others reaching out to him? He's easy to reach at 1-646-827-0009. Or, you can e-mail him at info@presentationexcellence.com.
