Earlier today I posted about three Irish spams I’d received in the morning. I didn’t go into any detail, as I was busy with other things and also wanted to see how Monster would handle the situation.
The email that they sent to several hundred people included a lot of email addresses that I recognised for one reason or another. Hardly surprising as all the businesses in question belong to IT@Cork.
The email carries the “imaginative” subject line – “For the attention of your HR department!!”, which is never a good sign. Of course it’s even worse when you consider we actually have a page on our site dedicated to careers etc., Of course it doesn’t say “please send HR spam here”, so maybe it wasn’t obvious enough … Who knows?
The email itself is really pathetic:
Good Morning,
Firstly, I would like to clarify that we are not a recruitment agency.
I have just come across your company information and I wanted to introduce my self to you. My name is John Burns and I am the business development manager for Monster in Ireland North and South.
Monster is the biggest online recruitment website in the World and we have a large portfolio of solutions to make your recruitment more cost affective, quicker, and easier to manage.
Click here to see our portfolio of solutions
Are you tired of waiting on the right candidates to respond to your advertisements? If so our unique Monster CV Database may be just what you are looking for. Our Database gives you the freedom to search for your ideal candidates and download their CV or contact details immediately. With over 250,000 CV’s in our Irish Database and an average of 6,600 new CV’s added every month your chances of finding the “right candidates” is exceptionally high.
In addition to our CV Database we have Job postings where you can post your vacancies on Monster and start receiving top candidates almost immediately, again with our average daily job views of 29,000 your vacancy is sure to be noticed and replied to.
I would love to make an appointment with you where I can take you through our website and show you all the different features and functions that are on offer and I can leave you with a day’s trial of our CV Database where you can try it out for your self and you never now, you may find a candidate or two that could be potential employees!
I look forward to hearing from you soon.
PS: Please accept my apologies if you recieved this Email in error.
Kind Regards,
John Burns
Business Development Manager
www.monster.ie
15d Gilford Road
Sandymount
Dublin 4
Tel: +353 (0)1 xxxxxxxxxxxx
Fax: +353 (0)1 xxxxxxxxx
Mobile: +353 (86) xxxxxxxxxxx
Monthly visits average 350,000 in 2007
Over 6,700 new CVs added to the CV Database in July 2007
Best online Recruitment & Training Website in Ireland – Golden Spider Award Winners
Monster Worldwide Limited. Registeredin Ireland with number 337700. Registered office: Hillview House, 15D Gilford Road, Sandymount, Dublin 4
Privileged/Confidential Information may be contained in this message. If you are not the addressee indicated in this message, (or responsible for delivery of the message to such person), you may not copy or deliver this message to anyone. In such case, you should destroy this message and kindly notify the sender by reply email. Please advise immediately if you or your employer does not consent to email for messages of this kind. Opinions, conclusions and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of the Monster Worldwide Limited shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by it. For more information on our business ethical standards please refer to our website
Note carefully that the email is not addressed to anyone in particular.
It’s a general email that has been sent en masse, or in other words it’s unsolicited bulk (commercial) email.
So the apology in the PS is even odder. Why would you send a bulk email spam and then try to get out of it by apologising?
And of course he has included the standard disclaimer. The fact that he can’t spell doesn’t help either….
His usage of capitalisation and general writing style is worryingly bad…
So what to do?
Well the obvious thing would be to contact the person who sent it, so I did. I rang him this afternoon. He didn’t want to hear about my complaints and was totally unrepentant. Seemingly scraping addresses from websites and using them for marketing purposes (ie. spamming) is perfectly acceptable for Monster’s staff.
That’s a serious issue for any company. It’s even more serious when you consider the issues they’ve had recently with security.
In the first instance this is unsolicited. I don’t want it. My staff don’t want it.
It was sent to a business email address, so unless they keep abusing our email addresses I can’t do much about it legally. Under current Irish legislation they can get away with sending the first spam, but once you tell them to stop they have to. If they don’t stop they’re breaking the law.
However there are other things that I can do.
First off I can submit the offending email to several DNS blacklists (they’re used by mail admins to block unwanted mails from entering their systems). Any other IT@Cork members who got hit by this junk need to submit the mail to spamcop et al as soon as possible (it has to be reported within 48 hours)
I could also instruct our technical staff to block all mail emanating from Monster from reaching any domains on our network, as we are perfectly entitled to block abuse of our network and email abuse is abuse whether Monster are willing to accept or not. I don’t want to take that measure as yet, but it’s an option I am considering.
Online recruitment is a highly competitive, but obviously lucrative, market. Can Monster afford to spam?
Maybe they need to get a hard lesson in the effects of having their smtp blocked by a major blacklist.
I’ve always considered spammers to be lazy, but I never thought I’d see a big company like Monster stooping this low.
Out of curiosity, what score did it get in SpamAssassin?
I’ll check when I get into the office later this morning.
Wow. That is absolutely shocking! To think Monster’s Business Development Manager writes like a 14-year-old. Where did they find this guy? His writing ‘style’ is more worrying than the fact that he’s spamming.
To think that people spend time complaining about spam emails is terribly childish, Also going to this much trouble about a chap in Monster who is trying to probably get some business is equally as childish, these blogers have nothing better to do than complain, usually a lower class person, a waster or just a trouble maker.
Grow up michelle and put your energy elsewhere, its far more worthwhile!!!
Dear Monster Employee
Posting inane comments on my blog when you are using your employer’s internet connection isn’t very bright.
You, or one of your colleagues, is a spammer and should be ashamed.
Regards
Michele
Like i said these blogers have nothing better to do than complain, usually a lower class person, a waster or just a trouble maker.
PS im not from monster, i work with m/s
Not so clever after all michelle egh……
So you’re using Monster IP space, but claim that you work for Microsoft?
You’re also trying to offend me I presume?
And you can’t even spell my name correctly!
Yes michelle
I suggest you take a course in tracking IP addressess!!!
Pedro – I don’t suppose you used to work for Sky Handling Partners by any chance, did you?
By the way i never said i work for micro soft i said m/s
You presume to much michelle!!
Anyway i am going to do some work now so good luck to you and i hope you continue to enjoy bloging even if it is as pety as your type.
Remember once a spammer always a spanner!!!
Let’s see. Your IP is appearing as: 193.164.143.242
A look up on that gives the following:
inetnum: 193.164.143.0 – 193.164.143.255
netname: MONSTER-NET
descr: Monster Worldwide Deutschland GmbH
country: DE
org: ORG-MWDG1-RIPE
admin-c: TM1213-RIPE
tech-c: TM1213-RIPE
status: ASSIGNED PI
mnt-by: RIPE-NCC-HM-PI-MNT
mnt-by: COLT-UK
mnt-lower: RIPE-NCC-HM-PI-MNT
mnt-routes: COLT-UK
mnt-domains: COLT-UK
mnt-by: MONSTER-MNT
mnt-routes: MONSTER-MNT
source: RIPE # Filtered
organisation: ORG-MWDG1-RIPE
org-name: Monster Worldwide Deutschland GmbH
org-type: OTHER
address: Bad Homburg
e-mail: thomas.malik@monster.com
mnt-ref: EU-COLT-MNT
mnt-by: EU-COLT-MNT
mnt-by: EU-COLT-MNT
mnt-by: MONSTER-MNT
source: RIPE # Filtered
person: Thomas Malik
address: Monster Worldwide Deutschland GmbH
address: Siemensstrasse 15-17
address: D-61352 Bad Homburg
address: Germany
phone: +49 6172 919-404
e-mail: thomas.malik@monster.com
nic-hdl: TM1213-RIPE
mnt-by: TISCALI-NOC
mnt-by: MONSTER-MNT
source: RIPE # Filtered
% Information related to ‘193.164.143.0/24AS41527’
route: 193.164.143.0/24
descr: Monster Worldwide Deutschland GmbH
origin: AS41527
mnt-by: COLT-UK
source: RIPE # Filtered
Its quite obvious you have just made that all up, i will let you to contine to believe that i work in monster, the fact is i really dont and have no affiliation with them.
You seem to be getting a bit upset michelle, chill out man!
Have a nice day
Hi ken, no i didnt work with them! are they here in the UK or in Ireland?
I love the smell of Napalm in the morning, smells like toasted spamming Monster fuckwits. You do realise “Pedro” that you’re about to lose your job, right?
napalm, burning toast, where did this freak come from?
Marks and Spencers, then? 🙂 This isn’t just an annoying blog comment, it’s a rich, creamy, _Marks and Spencers_ blog comment. 😉
And if it is the action of a ‘lower class person’ (give a big welcome back to the Victorian Era) to complain about corporate abuses, then call me a lower class person!
Also, Pedro, please do learn to spell.
The comments alone are worth a separate blog post from me. This Pedro guy is a little silly as he’s not likely to stay working with Monster for long. I did the same IP tracking on a company who defended Carphone Warehouse and then tried to say they didn’t have any affiliation. One glance at the author’s experience and expertise should tell these people that we have the ability to find them.
BTW, how can Monster be “the biggest online recruitment website in the World” if they’re not a recruitment agency?
Also, I can’t believe you didn’t have the decency to publish the email address it came from. It is after all, public domain 😉
Paul
Sorry about not publishing the email address, but as you may have noticed I removed both the email address and the telephone numbers from the email.
Michele
I know Michele, but we could have all emailed him to tell him how much of a twat he is – not for sending the original email, as that could have been combated with an apology. It’s his stupidity thereafter and stupidity of the company for thinking they could sue you that kills me.
The vast majority of organisations don’t include sufficient privacy statements (these are different to privacy policies). IT Cork is just one of many. Ireland is one of the few countries in the world that has black and white legal requirements. Even the UK is a little grey at best.
I’m half tempted to publish the last couple of emails I’ve received from him!
Go for it dude. BTW, I’ve promoted this blog post on my Facebook profile page. That’s over 400 people who will see this. Importantly though, out of those connections, many of them are extremely senior decision makers for very large organisations.
This is the worst form of PR any company could attract. Perhaps this entire conversation – i.e. blogs/facebook/twitter should be used as a case study to demonstrate how *not* to react to customer feedback.
Paul
I’m going to speak to our / my solicitor first, as I really don’t feel like dealing with more legal letters 🙂 I get enough about sites we host!
It’s not a customer service issue or customer feedback issue.
It’s down to business practices and unethical marketing tactics.
I would love to email hundreds of people to promote our services. It would be fantastic, but I can’t. I have to use ethical methods which cost more money.
Why does Monster or their staff think that the rules don’t apply to them?
It’s all a bit mad really
Michele
I know only too well about best practices – but even that can be addressed with an apology, coupled with ‘we promise not to do it again’.
Paul
Exactly
If he’d apologised instead of posting silly comments (or getting one of his friends to do so) I’d have forgotten about it all …
Michele
Missing Pedro already…
Damien dugg the story:
http://digg.com/business_finance/Monster_com_Irish_office_spams_people_refuses_to_apologise_then_get_legal
and also covered it on his blog:
http://www.mulley.net/2007/10/02/monster-ireland-spam-irish-people-follow-it-up-with-legal-threats/
Vote for Pedro!
Ouch ! What an idiot to be honest. Maybe someone should contact Monster’s HR dept ?
Pedro Pedro Pedro… Are you from Barcelona? M/s(!?) and Fawlty Towers have so much in common!
I also received the email from Monster and was taken aback by its amateurishness. I thought it must be some kind of joke or a disgruntled employee trying (successfully) to embarrass the company . I also called Monster to check and was amazed that this guy really did hold a responsible position at Monster.
The email address of the sender was originally xxxxxxx@monster.com, then he attempted to recall it and then it was sent again by a xxxxx@gmail.com
I enjoyed the way you handled the situation Michele and the manner in which you have exposed Pedro for what he is.
let me tell the great unwashed Michele is not Lower Class. Perhaps on Saturday gone in disguise one could be forgiven for thinking so, but alas that was a momentary lapse.
Pedro it is Lower Class Marx & Sparks that are flying. Do you know a good recruitment agency that may find you a job if you get to a point where you need to find a newer employer?
Thanks to the workers & the working class who work, there is mobility for persons seeking new employment horizons.
>Michele was the Email from monster CC’ed or multi To: lined to many? how many? were the emails of distribution exposed to all recipients? while the law may allow one time B2B spamming B4 opt-out does it allow for data protection where companies A-Z are associated by inclusion with email and thus appearing to be a party to the email.
Brian
The email was CCed to about 100 addresses (possibly more – I wasn’t counting them!)
Michele
I know Michele, but we could have all emailed him to tell him how much of a twat he is – not for sending the original email, as that could have been combated with an apology.
Yeah, let’s send him emails he doesn’t want!
the most entertaining comment thread i have read in quite a while – thanks pedro
Monster Mash
I was working on my blog late one night
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight
For Monster from the Web began to rise
And suddenly to my surprise
(They did the mash) They did the Monster mash
(The Monster mash) It was an email smash
(They did the mash) It …
@Twenty – while it might be appealing two wrongs do not make a right
I’m with ken. The poor guy in the original mail has a reading age of about seven. He must be the son of the Boss. I’m thinking yer man from The IT Crowd with the hairy chest and dodgy hair.
Either that or a crafty seven year old is masquerading as a Monster employee.
Going off to create a Digg account so I can spread the word.
Monster Ireland Career Advice
MONSTER, THE JOBS site with global reach, has written a case study in how to lose friends and skewer professional reputations by misappropriating e-mail addresses of contacts used in Irish marketing campaigns. This information comes second-hand from th…
This thread has entertained me as much as it has informed four years of third level creative multimedia developers who now think Monster Ireland cannot be trusted.
You cannot buy trust. You win it. And when you lose it, you’re done.
Bernie
Very true.
Spamming is dumb. Trying to defend it is really dumb.
Michele
I am not Pedro nor am I affiliated with Monster, but this IS beyond Childish, if you dont like the message then freaking delete it, to use so much energy on it that is just plain STUPID! also I understand people being mad about Porn mail and penis enlargements, but this is simply a company, a GREAT company trying to get some customers, if they dont do this how do you think employers are ever going to see your resume online?
I will however admit that the Pedro character is very juvenile, and he should not have started commenting.
So sorry but GROW UP!
3xw – thanks for your comment
If I trawled through technorati and collected a few hundred email addresses and then sent them (including you) a marketing mail about a product or service I was selling would you find that acceptable?
Michele
Stranger than fiction. I love the Irish blogosphere. 🙂
It is amazing to me that someone who is apparently in charge of Business Development would think that spamming would do anything to build the type of sustainable business relationships that companies like Monster need in order to remain profitable.
It seems that somewhere, someone forgot the underlying goals, and attempted to quickly capture a few new accounts, without caring that they would potentially loose existing accounts. Shortsighted, irresponsible, unprofessional, and foolish are all adjectives that pop in to my mind.
3XW ?? Lol to anyone who thinks SPAM is acceptable?
Put your email address out there and let the garbage build up! Might lessen the load on the rest of us.
If people don’t want shit delivered to their inboxes thats their right not to have pestering companies scoping for business.
Its my right not to have second hand smoke in my face, its my right not to have people invade my personal space, it my right to turn missionaires away from my door, its my right not to have visitors if I dont want to. And its my right not to have corporate crap shoved in my personal email inbox !!
Where the hell do you get off saying “if you dont like the message then freaking delete it” I now have to have spam buffer email inboxes – a couple of which receive over 300 spams a day?? Im not wasting my time clicking ‘delete’ get a brain !
How about we penalise companies who try to make a free grab for advertising by pestering us? Makes much more sense to me.
and as for Pedro the Monster employee who doesnt know too much about IP adressing – laughing stock!! be prepared to have the internet stamp of ‘DUMBASS’ written all over your face.
Pfft Monster, if you condone this behaviour from your employees you must be getting desparate!
I posted the Digg link over on boards.ie
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=54127055#post54127055
Hey good goin Pedro you freaking toolbag, I hope this gets dugg all the way to the #1 spot! Nice to know you guys have nothing to do but harass bloggers all day at that awesome company of yours.
Actually now that I say it, that sounds like a pretty sweet deal. You think maybe I could come work for you? Do I just post my resume on your crummy site?
3x isn’t pedro? Well he does spell better. Or did someone tell Pedro about spell checkers? I suppose we just have to assume that 3x, like all of us, is just adamantly pro-spam. In fact I don’t just like spam, I love it. Spam, spam, spam, spam….
chum@speakeasy.net
Nice reading material. Haven’t enjoyed reading something for ages. I don’t normally read the entire tread and comments, but this one had to be red.
Pedro, my man, you really blew it. I could write a lot better then you guys at Monster and english isn’t my native language.
In life you get what you give, in this case, you (Monster and “his” employees) give crap you are going to get crap, so if you can handle the true then stay put and don’t embarase yourself.
Looks like Pedro may be making use of Monsters services pretty soon if you ask me.
Unfortunately every ‘recruitment consultant’ I’ve ever dealt with has been a techno-illiterate leech who would happily lie and cheat to increase their personal wealth. No change here then.
Hi Michele and thanks Paul W.
I have seen some amazing correspondence in my day – ‘Good day for burying bad news’ springs to mind. If you want I can pass this over to City Watch dog firm, on managing compliance on the net, they would love this. I also know some senior editors here and in the US. This could become an all time classic. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
“these blogers have nothing better to do than complain, usually a lower class person, a waster or just a trouble maker.”
Makes you think what class of person reads these blogs and leaves comments….
Monster picks fight with Blogger
In case no one has spotted it yet there is a very interesting post going on at the Michele Neylon blog. It appears that a Monster employee has decided to pick a fight, thinking no one would know realise who he was.
More fool him, so as a result it has…
Poor Pedro,
your clumsy internet backtracks I am afraid will quite probably earn you the same reputation as crying emo Chris Crocker with his Leave Britney Alone youtube debut.
so when can we expect your youtube compilation? Remember not to wear too much eyeliner or you will get the same problems with it running down your face. And like the original I can’t wait to see Seth Green rip you apart too!
BTW Good work Michele and any other bloggers taking the little peoples fight to the big corps keep it up guys !
Originally posted this to Tom Rafferty’s blog but since this is where the issue arose from I’d like you to enjoy it in full too:
I originally picked up on this story from digg and followed it to http://www.mneylon.com/blog/. It really seems like a massive over reaction from a group of cliquey, smug bloggers who have little else to worry about.
The short story is that some newbie at Monster sent out a bunch of emails trying to impress his boss. When tackled by Michele Neylon about this he became a bit embarrassed, flustered and defensive, probably hoping the ‘issue’ would go away.
Essentially he made a mistake and then became defensive about it – who can honestly say they have never done that?
Plus we aren’t privy to the contents of the telephone conversation between John Burns and Michele which led to the later blog entry. Undoubtedly M was really nice to him on the phone and not at all antagonistic but he just refused to apologize. I mean that’s how these type of phone conversations usually pan out, right?
Congratulations to Michele and Tom for humiliating this guy and possibly costing him his job. I’d recommend using a better spam filter and/or learning to use the delete button when it comes to your email.
I’ve nothing to do with the guy btw, I just caught it on digg and after listening to his voicemail got annoyed enough to leave this comment. Hmmm, misdirected outrage and too much time on my hands, maybe I should start a blog too?
Would you, then, consider yourself pro-spam?
Posted this story on my blog, purely because I think it is absolutely incredible!
segovia103 said:
“I’d recommend using a better spam filter and/or learning to use the delete button when it comes to your email.”
really tsk tsk, how about you go somewhere else and teach courses on how best people should manage their OWN agenda’s perhaps?
or how about you leave us to manage our own inboxes, and spam filters there and perhaps a little anti-arrogance pill for yourself might not go astray too?
We have locks on doors and security systems only because there are theives, we only have virus scanners because people make viruses, and we only have spam filters because …..
Anyone like to volunteer this it might take segovia103 a little time to get it ?
WELL DONE ! its because we have spammers!
Perhaps he will lose his job over it perhaps he wont, pure speculation my slow friend, pure speculation. As long as he has email he just might get another offer from Monster in the form of spam. Lets hope he hasnt gone to one of your ‘dealing with spam’ lectures, he might miss out on his next opportunity !
If you look at my followup post you’ll see that I did in fact receive an apology from Monster
Regards
Michele
“PS: Please accept my apologies if you recieved this Email in error.”
er…like
….my comment is on your blog now!
how did it get here.. must be an error !
this reminds me of another spam addon thingy
“sorry if you are not interested in our offer….
but maybe you’d like to tell your friends and colleagues about us!”
(yeah I might just tell them about you allright) 😉
Now I understand why Michele has a ‘Strong Feelings’ about us recruiters…
Not all of us are that bad! Honest!!! 🙂
Ivan
http://www.JobsBlog.ie
And after it all dies down, a recruitment agent comes in, says “We’re not all bad” then shamelessly self promotes a recruitment blog…. Bottom feeders
Monster.com is in bed with recruiters, good scam they got going – making everyone believe they are in the business of helping people find jobs ha ha they are good, have to give them that, people are so stupid