Bulk Mail - It really works!

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Tom Watson on Philanthropy

Bulk Mail - It really works!

You have to love the idiot who says :

I have been on the Internet for 5 years doing bulk e-mail. I know one thing for sure about it. IT REALLY WORKS! For the first time we are offering to sell our list. These names are clean of duplicates and have just been updated. Do not be fooled by the others selling 100 million for such a low price, those names are full of foreign names and duplicates and are VERY OUTDATED.

This fine fellow sent me this email. Should I believe him? Well, in case I wasn't sure, HE SENT IT 500 TIMES to my hotmail account.

The idiot also promises that he'll respond if you use the email For helpingy@yahoo.com and claims that if I want to leave the list send a note to unitednet30@excite.com. However, the email purports to come from netvision1@beer.com.

So, what he's telling me is: Bulk mail works so well that he has to use a fake address when sending it out, but if you read the mail, sign up, and send $150, he'll send you 20 million names.

Well, Watson, what can we conclude here? Fascinating Holmes! Based on the evidence, I think he has only 40,000 names and he sends email to each of them 500 times. Brilliant Watson. Have the inspector send him an a denial of service attack when you get a chance.

Insult to injury

Those fine folks at Hotmail are kind enough to monitor these kinds of emails. They put them in my Junk Mail folder by default. Thanks, Hotmail. But then, they tell me that my account is over the size limit and I can't send emails until I fix it. Then they beg me for money. Just $19.95 a year to increase my account to 10Mb and have 30Mb of storage in MSN communities. It also exepmts me from the 30-day non-use policy (we'll get to that in a second).

Hold on, Hotmail. I don't need 10Mb from you. I have all the storage I need, thanks very much. What I need is a filter that notices that I got 500+ copies of the same damn message and deletes 499 of them so I don't have to buy more space from you.

Everyone of my 4 loyal readers knows I'm a Microsoft stockholder. I want Hotmail to work. But let's not let our loyalty to Microsoft get in the way of criticizing bad service. You allowed my name into public directories by default. Then you charge me for more space so spammers can fill it up. No thanks - time for you to rethink that.

A friend of mine named John Heartfield found his account and several years of email deleted because he didn't check it for 30 days. Boy was he pissed. He posted that on the ITP class list. I understand Hotmail suspending your account and sending you email to the account name you gave them when you signed up. But I don't like them deleting you out of hand. Yes, it's free. Yes, if you're not looking at ads they don't make money. Yes, 2mb and 2mb and 2mb add up. But this is not the way to treat a customer you're trying to turn into a relationship. If Microsoft wants Passport to be a "wallet" and a "security system" that people "trust," they should take a lesson from Amex or Visa. Then don't stop me from charging if I forget to buy something with their card for a month. Food for thought.