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STILL, WE’RE curious. Who is sending this stuff? How did they get
our e-mail boxes? Who runs the companies behind these offers? And what
would happen if a person actually followed up and tried to buy
something?
Armed with a fresh batch of junk
mail — culled from a work e-mail account, a personal account and from a
number of personal accounts created just for this story — we set out to
answer these questions.
E-MAIL
HARVESTING
I get at least 25
spams a day in my personal account, advertising every business in the
book. A good portion of it promotes online porn, but I also received a
fair share touting business opportunities and herbal health remedies.
Rarely did I get spam from companies that are household names.
Using my name and a combination of six numbers, I
created a few new accounts through free online services such as Microsoft
Corp.’s Hotmail and Yahoo Inc.’s YahooMail. (MSNBC is a Microsoft-NBC
joint venture.) I provided different registration information for each
account, then sat back and waited for the deluge.
It didn’t take long. |
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In only one of the e-mail accounts, I provided all of the
information requested (name, address, demographics, etc.) during the
registration process, and I used this e-mail address just one time — to
purchase a gift certificate from Borders.com. Less than a week later, the
spam started rolling in — jamming the in-box with more spam than the other
new accounts I had created.
Anne Rodems,
customer-service manager for Borders.com, the online service run by
Borders Group Inc., says its privacy policy prohibits Borders from selling
or renting any of its customers’ e-mail addresses, so it’s unlikely that
my e-mail address was passed along by them. Yahoo’s privacy policy also
bars selling or renting users’ information, says Lisa Pollock, director of
messaging products for Yahoo.
I contacted
one of the spammers, Dial Direct USA, a long-distance telephone provider
in Fond du Lac, Wis., to ask how it acquired my e-mail address. Tom
Johnson, the company’s marketing director, says he gets e-mail addresses
from an e-mail harvesting program called Target 2001, made by Microsys
Technologies Inc. of Findlay, Ohio. E-mail harvesters are computer
programs that scan Web sites and databases for addresses and gather them
for spammers.
Dial Direct’s Johnson says
e-mail has been an effective marketing tool for his small business, which
competes with such telecommunications giants as AT&T Corp. and Sprint
Corp. Dial Direct sends about 15,000 e-mails a day to potential customers
in targeted areas, and the mailings net the company about 10 to 15 new
clients a day, Johnson says.
NO LOVE LOST
HERE
A spam from one of the other
e-mail accounts that caught my eye was one after my own heart — literally.
A message from “lrichey@123goal.com” promised to provide me with an online
place where I could meet thousands of other singles. “Find Your True Love
Here,” the e-mail beckoned, followed by a link to a Web site called
Date.com. My e-mail reply to “lrichey” was returned as
undeliverable.
The online-dating site
included lists of personal ads for singles all over the country. The site
doesn’t ask for payment to submit a profile, but when users convert to
“premium” memberships — which allows other members to contact them — they
must pay $25. |
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New York-based Date.com says the e-mail I received didn’t come from
it, but instead was generated by one of its Web affiliates that gets paid
for driving traffic to the Date.com Web site. Although the company does
send e-mail marketing pitches to people who have opted in to receive them,
Date.com Chief Executive Meir Strahlberg says the company has a
zero-tolerance policy for spammers.
”[Date.com] is a real, legitimate company that has a legitimate
service,” he says, noting that the site signs up 7,000 to 10,000 new users
a day. Date.com is the fifth-largest personals site, with 1.2 million
unique visitors in December 2001, according to Internet research firm
Jupiter Media Metrix.
The company pays
affiliate Web sites a commission of $25 for each free user that registers
with the site, then Date.com works to convert them to paying members.
Getting them to pay for that second month is where Date.com makes its
money, Strahlberg says. E-mail marketing to people who have opted to
accept sales pitches is part of a larger advertising strategy that also
includes banner ads.
But the equation is
dependent on relationships with the other Web sites that drive traffic to
Date.com. “Sometimes these Web masters go beyond the terms and conditions
that we set forth,” Strahlberg says. “They send it and we have no way of
controlling it other than cutting off their accounts.” |
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A peek at the Date.com site’s privacy policy revealed that to
register for the site, users must give “personally identifiable
information” such as Social Security numbers or bank-account information.
Not what I’d call privacy. Strahlberg says individuals are asked to supply
the “personally identifiable information” only when making a payment, and
that the company guards that information closely and doesn’t sell or rent
it to third parties.
I called the Better
Business Bureau of Metropolitan New York, which had started a file on the
company in mid-January. The BBB had received some inquiries about Date.com
and had sent a questionnaire to the Web site for more information, says
Susan McMillan, a spokeswoman for the BBB. No one from Date.com has
responded; Strahlberg says Date.com hasn’t received the questionnaire, but
the company’s legal department is now looking into it.
REAL_BUSINESS_AT_HOME
Facing a two-hour-each-way commute these days, working from home is
sounding better every day. A message from “thefutureisnow4u” boasted its
service could help me make $2,000 a week from my home using just a
computer and telephone, and wouldn’t require me to do any selling. Sweet. |
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I called “Mel
& Jan” at the toll-free number listed at the bottom of the e-mail. A
recording said I could earn up to $5,000 as long as I was “coachable and
teachable,” and it instructed me to leave some basic details to receive
more information. I left my phone number and area code, twice, after being
instructed to by the recording ... which also said the company’s decision
about calling me back would hinge on my ability to follow
directions.
Later that day, a woman who
would identify herself only as “Jan” returned my message. When I told her
I was a reporter and wanted more information, she said she didn’t have
time to talk at length about her business because more than 4,000 people
had responded to her electronic ad.
Jan said
she and her husband run a consulting firm called MJ Enterprises, which
helps people set up home offices. She declined to provide more details on
how the business works. “I help budding entrepreneurs find the right
opportunity for them,” she said, before abruptly hanging up on me. Further
calls to the toll-free number went unreturned.
These work-at-home offers aren’t confined to the Internet, but can
reach a broader audience there and therefore have become more prolific,
says Jennifer Mandigo, a staff attorney for the Federal Trade Commission
in Washington. She stressed that not all work-from-home opportunities are
scams, but consumers need to pay close attention to the claims being
made.
“If the advertisement is making
promises about how much you can make doing this work at home job, it’s
probably not going to pan out,” she says.
Sigh. Guess I’ll keep my day job.
‘NON-ACCREDITED
UNIVERSITY’
Tracing that e-mail
proved a lot easier than spam sent to some of my other Hotmail accounts.
One message, from “AdamGreenpea@excite.com,” offered to sell me a diploma
from a “prestigious non-accredited” university for an undisclosed
cost. |
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I tried to respond to the address provided in his e-mail, but the
message was returned to me as being undeliverable. The e-mail also
included a phone number in Chicago, but the same solicitation sent to one
of my colleagues directed me to a phone number in New York.
I made a quick call to both offices of the “University
Degree Program,” and was instructed by voice mail to leave my name and two
phone numbers for more information. A company representative from the New
York number phoned me back the next morning. After I explained the reason
for my call, the suddenly highly agitated woman rushed me off the phone
but promised to have someone call me back to explain the
program.
A person claiming to be associated
with the University Degree Program returned my phone call, but declined to
be interviewed by telephone for this story. |
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I decided to check the Better Business Bureau to see if any
complaints had been filed about the company. The only listing for a
company with that name was based in California City, Calif., and a call to
the BBB chapter there turned up nothing but a report that the company was
classified as a school or academic institution, and was entered in the
system in November 2001.
Vicky Phillips,
chief executive of GetEducated.com, a distance-learning research and
consulting firm in Essex Junction, Vt., says that in general “degree
mills” like these are an old scam. “The Internet has made it easier to
target people,” she says.
Companies that
offer diplomas or degrees for a fee, and don’t require purchasers to
submit transcripts or take any tests — neither of which were a
pre-requisite in the spam I received — are tipoffs that the degrees are
worthless, Phillips says. Having a degree from a college or university
that’s not accredited is “sort of like having a luxury car with no
engine,” she says.
So much for higher
education.
SLIM CHANCE
Running down an e-mail that promised a “healthier,
slimmer and more vibrant” me turned out to be harder than losing those
last 10 pounds. According to the ad, the diet product, called “2-Day Slim
Down,” is made with aloe vera and “a futuristic blend of thermogenic
herbs” that burn fat. It also claimed to have 100 percent of the required
levels of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that an average person needs
in a day. For $39.95, I’d get a bottle of the 2-Day Slim Down and a bottle
of PermaSlim Fat Burning Capsules to help keep the weight off.
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But all attempts to track the e-mail
proved futile. There is no company name, phone number or contact
information anywhere on the Web site, even in the area where customers are
asked to place an order. Buyers can either pay by credit card or send
money electronically from a bank account.
The 2-Day Slim Down diet Web site was a subdirectory of a main site
called “www.1monthfree.biz.” A domain-name registry search for that URL
indicated that someone named Josh Lambert was the contact for
“1monthfree.” I tried calling the phone number in the registry, but it had
been disconnected. E-mails to Josh Lambert went unanswered.
Roxanne Moore, a registered dietitian in Baltimore,
Md., and a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, said the
2-Day Slim Down product would likely work as a laxative, cleansing your
body’s systems but not really doing anything to change eating habits or
add nutritional value — the cornerstones of a healthy weight-loss
plan.
“The weight is off Monday and Tuesday,
but it’s back on by Saturday,” she says. “These [products] are always on
the market and if one was successful, it would be the only one.”
The FTC encourages consumers to forward unsolicited
commercial spam to uce@ftc.gov.
Copyright © 2002 Dow
Jones & Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
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