Well, today, in the midst of doing research, buying and more for a business I’m launching very shortly, I received some spam that just ticked me off. Being a small business owner myself as well as someone that has done website design for people, this really hit home. Normally, I’m just a “trash it” type of guy, but this one irked me since it preys on people that don’t know that much about how things work online. Specifically, it targets people that click a link and go “oooh – ahhh!” then see the price tag. I also know that the “owner” of the said company claims that they don’t spam and blames the issue on “clients”. This grammatically screwed up sentence just doesn’t make sense though:
“We have clients that we independent consultants that market from time-to-time and violate their terms of service as Barry has done.”
So, he’s saying that his CLIENTS market things to HIS customers (or generic people) and are violating their OWN terms of service so you buy HIS products.?.?. That makes absolutely NO sense. On top of this, another supposed “client” used the exact form letter as the one in the link above – things that make you go hmmmm.
Well, here’s the email:
I have designed a new web page for you. I have not altered your existing site; I have simply created a prototype for your review because I am confident that I can earn your business.
To view your new design, please use this link: http://www.webdesignpark.info/4step/. You will simply be asked for the name of your organization for confirmation.
Sincerely,
James Perz
Only Websites
Sales Manager1432 E 840 N
Orem, UT 84097
(800) 932-6030If you wish to receive no more e-mails from us please click here
His confidence needs to take a damn hike!
Whats interesting is when you start digging… Dan Todd setup webdesignpark.info to forward to onlywebsites.com. Dan owns this website as well. Start digging more and you’ll see that H50.US is hosting the DNS for the site. Well, thats also owned by Dan. That record points to an email address of dan@hawaii5point0.com – guess which server hosts that? H50.US again – round and round we go. Sneaky, but not that sneaky… A quick traceroute points to a Colo company called KGIX. On top of this, someone at the company violated the 1&1 Terms of service by using their SMTP to send the email as well as using a domain hosted by them to forward to their other address. So, supposedly a CLIENT used a 1&1 account to spam courtesy of a domain owned by the same guy that owns onlywebsites.com…. I call bull.
