(fwd) Junk email address collection (from a junk emailer)

17 Dec 2003

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Personally, I think anyone who uses dejanews as a way to grep Usenet is
an idiot, but since this idiot actually did spend several hours doing so,
and then sent unsolicited commercial email to several thousand people,
it's worth listening to him. 

Of course he's wrong about DejaNews having anything to do with Stanford.
Anyone know anyone there?

This guy is obviously afraid of me. It's a pretty funny story, actually. 
Too bad I can't tell it to anyone.

- -rich

- ---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Name Witheld by Request
To: Rich Graves <llurch@networking.stanford.edu>
Subject: Important info for you

Rich,

There is one more point I would like to make to you.  Since you have
recently responded in a sincere way regarding everything I have asked you
about, I would like to return the favor and suggest some things that might
be of help to you and your cause.

If you want to put a damper on some of the random unsolicited emailings to
newsgroups members, I would like to tell you how.

I have done extensive marketing research online, and I am very involved
with Internet commerce and everthing that affects it.  Just like you have
your "circles" of associates, so do online business people.  I have met a
lot of business users online, and have learned the ins and outs of things
related to Internet commerce and marketing.

Anyway, in these "circles" of discussions, and seeing information and posts
from some of these business people, I have learned many things that your
group is most likely not exposed to.

For example, there is a major resource where the majority of email names
are stripped from, and I would like to reveal it to you, and give you the
solution to putting an end to it.  But only because I truly want to help,
and show you that I am not your enemy.

You may already know some of this.  The "Deja News" Web service (at
Stanford) is one of the major resources that some of these mailers use to
get names.  They attempt to do target marketing by doing searches for
keywords related to their customers, or their own, advertising material
that they wish to send.

They simply do a search for several words like "resumes" if they have
something to do with a resume service, etc.  I'm sure you get the idea.
After they do their search, they merely dump screen after screen of the
search engine's findings and then strip the addresses using a FIND-CONTAINS
"@" command in any database program.  This is how they strip the names to
create a mass email list.

There is ONE way that could really screw over these mailers from using this
resource.  This is inside information that has been revealed to me (I have
also seen references to it somewhere else).  Don't ask who it was that was
telling everyone about it, because I honestly couldn't tell you - I just
know it is going around.

Since you are there at Stanford, I am sure that you may be able to bring
this information to someone working on this project so they can make some
necessary changes.

Here it is:

When one of these mailers goes to do a search (and from what I hear, many
of them do it on regular intervals to get new names) they cannot do a TERSE
search. Why?  Because it cuts off the email addresses if you notice the
output.  They cannot obtain addresses from this data.

So what do they do?  They do a VERBOSE search and this way the email
addresses are completely listed.

Make a change to this VERBOSE search option so that it will only list the
partial email address, and you will eliminate THOUSANDS, if not millions of
unwanted email messages on the Net.

I guarantee if they made this change to the site it would make a HUGE
difference.  From what I hear, most newsreaders only list news post lists
by "author" and not by email address, so these companies cannot easily
strip names through regular newsgroup programs, and must use a service
(like Deja News) to compile large email lists.

Also, you and your buddies may want to look into a guy selling a software
program called "Floodgate."  Apparently this person is selling a program
for about $300 that is designed to strip names from text files that are
created from copying the output of other sources.

Just thought I would donate some helpful information to make up for my offense.

I don't mind if you should share this info with your contacts and if you
tell them that it came from me, however, I would prefer if you would not
post this information or statement publicly.  I do not wish to get involved
with a MAJOR uprising of business people that would murder me for revealing
stuff like this.

If I come across some other stuff which may be of interest to you, I will
let you know.  I think it is much better for us to work together instead of
against one another.

Let me know what you think,