Spamming using GG?!

#1 Hey Man I got this email too.

Looks like someone is using garagegames as a mailing list :/

#2 Isn't unsoliceted spam illegal? I believe you have to willingly consent to receive emails. If they had stated that we received the email as a result of signing up with garagegames that would be different, but that email isnt making that claim.

There is a link right below this thread to the GG privacy policy. If this company is not associated with GG then they are using your information in an illegal way, because you did not request this information to be sent to you.

#3 Got the same thing. That shouldn't last too long.

#4 My guess is they just grabbed all the e-mails and mailed to everyone. I mean, my project doesn't even have humans (just vehicles), much less a need for their stuff. So it's definitely spam.

Anyone know where we can complain about this company so the local BBB investigates them or something?

#5 I got this too.. but since I get so much spam I deleted it and didnt realize they got my email from here. They probably used a bot to get them. That's why you see people on webpages who will put their email address like blah[at]myDomainDOTCOM ore something similiar since bots will search pages for email addresses.

#6 same for me. already in the trash :)

#7 Bit annoying :( Damn spammers.

I'm trying to find the webpage where recently someone spammed a movie website mailing list and are now being sued for mega-bucks :) Can't remember all the details, just a bloke running the site, mr & mrs spammer come along and spam the hell out of the mailing list then mr webmaster decides to take some action about it :) Last I remember he'd tracked them down and started trying to contact them by telephone but after that didn't work he got his lawyers out.

Might be a decent idea, get back at the most bloody annoying tits on the earth (other than the Krankies) and earn yourselves some cash to pay for us all to come to the festival next year :p

edit - here it is, justice is a great thing :) now if only it would stop all of the rest of them.

http://www.law.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/View&c=LawArticle&cid=1029689051952&t=LawArticleTech

oh and

http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/2000/kubiszyn-2000-08.html

#8 I've gotten about 20 spam e-mails that got my name off of GarageGames. A lot of them are "list your business in our directory" sorts of things. They are spam, but they are better than:

"See a Teen Girl Do it with her horse it's FREE!"

Which I got in my yahoo account...if a page is publicly accessible anyone can read it, parse it, extract email addresses and send spam your way. The website doesn't have to sell your info, all they have to do is put your email address up somewhere public. I can easily click on member profiles here and get email addresses - if I can do it a bot can be configured to do it too.

A lot of people add things to their mail addresses to make them invalid, like jsmSPAMBEGONE16@cornell.edu. I'm too lazy, so I get mail about girl/horse pairings...

The good news is most of the spam comes from a few main companies, and the government is starting to crack down on them. As more people in government catch up to the information age and use email I'm sure they will become more active about fighting spam ;)

#9 hehe, good to hear that one. Maybe GarageGames.com should make it where only signed-up and logged in members can access other people's profiles and .plans. That way it will cut down on spam bot access to personal information. :P

#10 I'd advise everyone to check out www.spammotel.com before posting any email address on a web site.

#11 There are two types of emails within the Garage Games profile.

One is public (you don't have to supply one) and the other is private.

I'm assuming the people who got spammed have given a public email address ?? cos I didn't get the spam and don't have a public email address.

So maybe remove your public email address, or supply a hotmail type account that can be ditched every few months to avoid the spam.

#12 Slightly OT, but helpful. If you use Lookout! to read mail, there's a plugin at www.cloudmark.com that works wonders for filtering it out.

#13 Yeah,

I got this one too and I was tempted to start this thread myself.

Cold-calling makes me mad as hell!

- Melv.

#14 This is why we have public and private email adresses. Email collector bots go onto all sites and harvest email lists. Anywhere your email is listed in a public place, like this: jefft@garagegames.com, you are subject to getting harvested. You can try to get around it by putting something like jefft@garagegames.com assuming humans will remove the and a bot won't.

This still pisses me off. My email has been trashed by these bastards, and now you guys are getting junk mail collected from our site and made to look like the offer came from us.

In the future, I'm sure we will all need to move over to "white lists", where all email is summarily rejected unless you are on the recipients approved list of senders. Everything else will send back a "hand shake" that requires some form of human reply. There are several open source projects working on this, and I think it is the way to go.

Jeff Tunnell GG

#15 It really is too bad there are so many unscrupulous people out there.

Mailwasher is one client-side idea. It has a whitelist, blacklist, and 'rules' checking (ie: if not addressed directly to you, then mark as spam). email can either be automatically processed or previewed beforehand. Spam can be bounced back to make it look like your address was a bad one.

It's totally free, too (unless you wish to donate).

--Eric