Anybody who reads this blog knows that I’m ever so slightly opposed to spam, spammers and their ilk.
Talking to Irish SMEs on a regular basis you realise fairly quickly that email is more than just a business tool.
For many businesses email is the tool in many cases.
If their website is unavailable they may not notice or even be overly concerned, but if you put their email at risk, even for a few minutes, they will be very upset.
Judging by the kind of phonecalls we get spam and viruses would seem to be worrisome issues for the IT managers of many Irish companies. Anything that interrupts their work processes or clogs up the company mail server will, naturally, upset them.
In the case of Irish spam the actual content is very different from that coming from international sources.
Whereas international spammers focus on (in no particular order):
- Medicines
- Adult content (all types and flavours)
- Software (including spam filtering software!)
- Pyramid schemes
- 419 scams
The Irish ones are generally a lot simpler and, in most cases, a lot more naive.
International spammers would, generally speaking, not use their real email address or provide their real contact details.
In the case of a 419 scam you can expect to see multiple email addresses and phone numbers used as the scam progresses.
The Irish spammer, on the other hand, is not as clever or well-versed.
Most of them use their real email address and provide valid contact details.
Whereas their international counterparts maybe peddling sex, the Irish spammers push their own business, regardless of how irrelevant it might be to their target.
Some recent ones I have received:
- Reciprocal link requests – to a directory that actively accepts links
- “You have been spidered” – from a “search engine” – imagine if Google did that!
- B and B details – they seem to come in waves
- Design offers – I’m not in the market
- Hosting and design offers – now they’re just being silly
-
The list goes on….
What makes the Irish spammer different though is their attitude.
As they are using their real email address, as opposed to something completely fake (or even a joe job), you can send them an angry email and have a relative degree of certainty that it will be read by a human being.
I know that some people may have discovered this “new fangled invention” email and found out that they could email thousands of people at one go (click click.. so much work!) and I may, on occassion, be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. A polite, but firm email outlining why they should not do this should, in theory at least, be a positive move.
Or maybe not…
In other cases, such as the “IT Consultants”, who should know better, I am not going to give any quarter. Spam me or our clients and I will report you to your ISP, Spamcop and a number of other blacklists.
What I find amusing is when they argue with me. The first email I send will usually state categorically that I am not impressed with their abuse of the email system and demand that they desist immediately, also mentioning that they have already been reported to their ISP. If the spammer is just a naive twit who only discovered Outlook Express last week (headers tell you so much!) then you can expect either no reply or a brief apology. You really do not want to start an argument with them.
The Irish spammer, however, seems to like to argue. So I often get a “How dare you complain” reply.
Let me see, they spammed me, wasting my resources and my time with their unsolicited 2 MB PDF about a product I am never going to buy and I shouldn’t complain? Am I missing something?
Some of the other responses are amusing.
One gentleman who I actually rang got into a fluster and then tried to sweeten me by buying hosting. “I was just enquiring about hosting services”. Odd. I thought he was trying to sell me a satellite dish. Maybe I need new glasses.
So what can we do about it?
The short answer can be summed up in one word: Education.
People need to be educated on how to use email and how to avoid abusing it.
If you are the victim of spam do not simply delete it. Report it.
All of the Irish ISPs take spam seriously and the majority of Irish hosting companies have little tolerance for it.
In case you are curious the top spam countries are still the US and Korea.
Edit: Since I posted this a couple of minutes ago I’ve been spammed by a HR consultant. Charming. I’ll definitely be doing business with them. Not!
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