People that Spam Us

Hello, Loyal Readers! What do we think of spam? (all together now): WE HATE SPAM ! Yep, that's something that brings us all together, isn't it? And, there's no such thing as good spam. That's why we all take the proper precautions - by using disposable email addresses, right? And that keeps our main email addresses safe, correct?

None of us believe that, do we?

Well, Loyal Readers, spam is now approaching us from a more nefarious direction, from a more trusted source. Get ready, be prepared, because the spam is now coming from none other than other Embedded Systems companies.

I have enough spam as it is, and if it wasn't for MailWasher Pro I'd have one hell of a time keeping it under control. But I have to question any company that feels they have to opt me in without my permission.

O.K, now, time to get this really off my chest... here's a list of the companies that have chosen to spam me:

• PLX Technology . Yeah, they decided to send me their monthly newsletter. It just started showing up. But what really makes this unforgivable is that they're using a 3rd party company to send the emails, a " Professional Opt-In " company with a sad excuse for a privacy statement (does anybody really trust those, anyway?). Of course they're an opt-in company. They opted me in, didn't they?
• DesignGuide.com . They bought my email address, too. But what really makes these guys differnet is that they bypass my anti-spam filters not by sending a text or HTML email, but by emailing me this freakin' huge 570K JPG file (which I was easily able to reduce to only 93K).
• Manticore . This is a 3rd party emailer that has opted me into one of their clients. Manticore's privacy policy basically admits that they're spammers.
• ICC Media . I don't know where they bought my email address from, but at least these guys have the decency to send me text spam, and to do it themselves.

(deeeep breath)

O.K. I feel a little better now.

So, anybody else you guys wanna tell me about? My email address is at the bottom -give me a shout! Oh, I should tell you, it's written with JavaScript so it can't be harvested!

(By the way, I'll be busy for the next few weeks. I just got an email from this Nigerian guy that's gonna make me a multi-millionaire!)

Bill Giovino
Executuve Editor
Microcontroller.com

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Created:18-Aug-2004,

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