Thankfully, I don’t get a whole lot of spam on this site; the various safeguards I’ve put in place seem to work most of the time. (Thank you, Akismet.)
But I do occasionally get a spam message through the contact form. Up until now, I’ve generally ignored them. But I got one this morning that caught me in a whimsical mood, and so I think I’ll share it with the world, in its entirety–with all contact information intact apart from my own.
From: Jeff C. (thesourceav@thebirdmail.com via [redacted])
7:16AM
Hello Brian Eisley,
An email has been sent from Jeff C.. Here’s the message:
Text/Banner Advertising on your site – inquiry from Phil at The Source AV
Hi,
I’d like to inquire about doing a sponsored blog post – about 150-300 words that talks a little bit about DUI law and links back to our site http://www.thesourceav.com. We provide premier Custom Design, Engineering and Installation for home theater and I thought we might be a good fit for your readers/visitors on brianeisley.com.
Here’s a list of some blog post titles we’ve done in the past:
- Choosing Speakers for Your Home Theater
- The Only Reason for Using High-End Audio Cables
- Home Theater Installation: Hire a Professional VS. Doing It YourselfOur budget is around $15 for the post. Is this something you’d be open to?
Also we might be interested in a small banner ad if the price is right. Our budget is $40/year – something like this:http://i43.tinypic.com/2lbp4iw_th.jpg
Let me know if you’d be open to either or both of these.
Also if you have some other sites just send them over and we might be interested in doing a sponsored post on there as well!
Regards,
Phil
The Source AVThis additional information was provided:
Name: Jeff C.
Email: thesourceav@thebirdmail.com
Organization: The Source AV Design Group
Phone: 8007007029
Address: 3035 Kashiwa St., Suite 101
City/town: Torrance
State/province: California
Zip/postal code: 90505
Country: United States
Website: http://www.thesourceav.com/
Referred by: Another source (indicate below)Data Collected:
Time stamp: Jan. 26th, 2012 @ 9:16 am
IP: 180.190.199.35
UA: Mozilla on Windows
ISP: 180.190.199.35
Ref: http://www.brianeisley.com/contact/
Whois: http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=180.190.199.35
So.
Let it be known to all the world that The Source AV Design Group, of Torrance, CA, is a spammer (or, at the very least, is foolish enough to hire a spammer). The same applies to “Phil” and to “Jeff C.”, whoever they might be.
Also, let it be known that, for some reason, The Source AV Design Group, of Torrance, CA, wishes to be prominently linked with a post about DUI law. (See the first paragraph of their request, above.) Why this would be is a mystery to me, but hey–I’m just reporting.
Any potential customers of The Source AV Design Group, of Torrance, CA, who might come across this post via Google or whatever–and they will–should know that they will be supporting the unethical and highly freaking annoying advertising practice of spamming, should they give any money at all to these people. Do with that knowledge as you will.
And anyone who may be thinking of asking me for the same favor in the future would be advised to pay close attention. I do not respond well to spammers. And, should you offend me so, I just might take the opportunity to have fun at your expense.
That is all.
…DUI law…???? As in driving under the influence….????
It would appear so. No idea why. (Assuming they meant to do that instead of just poorly copying boilerplate.)
Lol extra points for the title of the post. I just got a message from them as well through my contact form and decided to look up “thebirdmail” for a nice diversion for a bit.
Oh I forgot to say that the blog stats say the person who wrote the message is in Lahore – Punjab, Pakistan.
Yeah, and the IP address 180.190.199.35 is in the Philippines. With spammers, who can tell?
oh we just received one of these too.
“Phil” is definitely a multi-tasker – he also apparently works for a Nissan dealer in Redlands, CA
I’ve gotten two of these in the past two days, both from Phil:
Phil
ottonavi@thebirdmail.com
http://ottonavi.com
and
Phil
packardlaw@thebirdmail.com
http://www.michaelpackardlaw.com
Hmmm. All of Phil’s contact emails are with thebirdmail.com. Clearly this site is important in some way to the operation.
There’s no site set up there; the front page of the domain is a standard link-farm parking page. However, WHOIS says it’s registered to an ISP called FatCow. Their anti-spam policy seems pretty clear–but I have my doubts about that, since thebirdmail.com appears to be under their direct control.
I am sure there are spammers out there and we see spam caught in our secure server all the time. WIth that said, we are not the spammer. Other than our web site and an invitation to our twice a year NEW Products events we don’t advertise in any way. There are manufacturers that have banner links to our service but these are not generated by us. These banner ads are generated by the company NetSertive on behalf of the manufacturers trying to direct clients to our facilities.
Whats strange is the DUI link. I couldn’t find it but maybe some web company has found that we also own an Employment Background Screening company and somehow attached the DUI link to our AV web site rather than our Background Screening web site.
In any case, we don’t and will never spam for any reason and respect the privacy of all people.
Brian, did you happen to notice that the email went to “TheBirdMail.com. We own our own domain name and have no need to disguise ourselves.
To respond to both comments:
Well, I might have been inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt, and to accept your claim that you had nothing to do with the message–although that brings up the question of why a spammer would falsely claim to be representing you. (Methinks you might need to talk to NetSertive.)
I repeat, I might have been inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt. But that was before I saw your colleague Steve Lord’s rather less-polite private message:
In order to make a libel claim stick, you would have to prove (a) that the information I posted is false, and (b) that I knew it was false. I doubt if anyone looking at the spam message would say that I was unreasonable in concluding that it came from you. (If you don’t believe me, and you want to waste an hour of your lawyer’s time to have them tell you this, be my guest.)
Now, it is true, I can’t be absolutely, one-hundred-percent certain that you deliberately spammed me. So I suppose it was wrong to give the impression that I was certain. However, I qualified the statement by pointing out that, at the very least, you were foolish enough to hire a spammer. If we accept that you didn’t do it yourself, then you need to sit down with your marketers and have a serious talk.
So, please tell your colleague Steve Lord that no, there will be no retraction; his verbal abuse has effectively demolished any impulse I might have had in that direction. The smart thing to do with Internet criticism is either to respond politely, as you did, or to ignore it–because, let’s be honest, my “weakass blog” is hardly a threat to your business.
Bluster, threats, and namecalling, on the other hand, will usually just make the situation worse.