Comments on: Unprofessional Business Acts – Spamming & Email Harvesting

By: Anita

Anita — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 20:27:24 +0000

Hi Raquel -
I’m so glad to hear that you decided to not buy her site. That would be one horrible reputation to try to come back from. Especially since she often claims to have sold the sites and is running under an alias. Wow – I just don’t know how people have the time to put into things like this and I’m truly amazed the sites are still running at all.

I know I’m extremely late with my reply here but we had a huge issue with our comments here on the blog. However, if you’re still looking for a legitimate site for sale, we have one ourselves.

You can find the details here:
http://www.websitebroker.com/site-details-999953238.html

And one final note – I wanted to point out an awesome site where one can be warned about potentially harmfull scammers. Awesome service!
http://www.bustedscammers.com

By: Raquel

Raquel — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 16:08:56 +0000

Hi all

Thank you for the very rich posts. The site has been actually sold and I am investigating business to purchase. Apparantly the new owner is now again selling these sites but with this type of bad press I don’t think it would be worthwhile for me to purchase. If any of you know of legitimate professional Wahm related sites for sale I would appreciate the lead.

Again thank you for the heads up.
Raquel

By: Kara

Kara — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:03:14 +0000

They wouldn’t be able to turn you in for spam if they didn’t have any emails from you. Although if they signed up to your newsletter (double opt-in), they can cry spam all they want but the proof they signed themselves up is there. This is why it’s important to have a mailing list provider (like Aweber, which is what we use) to take care of those issues. Someone can claim they’ve been spammed by you, but your mailing list provider has the proof this person did in fact give you permission to send them emails.

The problem here was that NONE of us subscribed to ANYTHING. She was adding people to her list without using the double opt in process. So turning her into her mailing list provider got her immediately shut down. They could instantly see all these emails were added by her.

By: nancy

nancy — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:38:24 +0000

I have a question….what would happen if someone just took a disliking to you, you had never spammed them, and they reported you for spamming? This has never happened to me, but I can see the wheels turning in some mischievous heads.

By: Tara Burner

Tara Burner — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:46:36 +0000

I’m with Shelly on this one…
and yes thanx for naming names, cuz’ I’ve gotten all kinds of spam from Ms S. Kobs
and even posted on her new forum she just took over to REMOVE ME and she posted some lame nonsense.
Blech!
Tara

By: Shelly

Shelly — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:11:19 +0000

Thank you girls for naming names on your blogs! I do indeed know who this is and I have heard numerous times about her harvesting folks email addys from yahoo groups, forum boards etc and then spamming ads to people who never signed up to receive them.

By: val

val — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:35:18 +0000

Yep, done being nice. 2 weeks ago I was angry and sent her a nicer email telling her to take me off her list of spam. She said sorry, blah,blah, blah and that she’d take care of it. Of course we know how far that went.

Thank you for posting the abuse email so I can send her there. I’m taking those steps and I’m also reporting to her hosting company. I’ve had it!

By: Kara

Kara — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:14:22 +0000

Most of the time I’m nice about things and let them off with a warning when they say “I didn’t know”. Although I do make them fully aware of what they are doing is ILLEGAL and UNETHICAL.

However, this woman KNOWS and I’m done being nice. Spam laws were put in place for a reason, and she’s in full violation. Those addresses were HARVESTED and in no way, shape, or form did she have permission to send us her crap. SHE KNEW IT! So yes, I’m making an example out of her and doing everything I can to get her shut down.

Don’t think me completely heartless to the wahm world because I DO understand, to a point. This woman crossed the line and is fully aware she’s making people mad. Don’t hesitate to turn her in!

By: Lauren

Lauren — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:04:14 +0000

After just being bombarded with unsolicited emails over my scrapbooking business issues – these last round of emails from Ms. Kobs have really set me off!

Ignorance is no excuse – and after you’ve been asked, and told to remove email addresses from your list that were obviously harvested in the first place – it is then complete disregard to continue to send those unsolicited newsletters & emails!