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07 Apr 2011

Anti-social networks Email

I've belonged to LinkedIn for a long time, long enough to have collected over 500 connections, all to people I at least sort of know. It's sometimes useful. So why am I about ready to block all their mail as spam?

Because I get a lot of mail like this:


From: Dennis Wirthmann via LinkedIn <member@linkedin.com>
Reply-To: Dennis Wirthmann <dennis.wirthmann@googlemail.com>
To: John Levine <update@abuse.net>
Subject: Einladung in mein Netzwerk bei LinkedIn

LinkedIn
------------Dennis Wirthmann requested to add you as a connection on LinkedIn:
John,
Ich möchte Sie zu meinem beruflichen Netzwerk auf LinkedIn hinzufügen.
Dennis
Accept invitation from Dennis Wirthmann [LINK]

I do not know this guy, and he does not know me. (I don't speak German, either.) He just joined LinkedIn, and he apparently has one of my role addresses in his address book, which he let Linkedin scrape and blast out invitations.

I can say no, and tell them it was spam, and I won't get any more invitations from him. But the next guy who has that address will do the same thing, because there's no way to tell them to stop. I get more of this than I get legitimate mail related to the addresss on my account.

So here's a tip: if you send out bulk mail, even delightful friendly warm fuzzy bulk mail which you claim isn't bulk mail because each one is a lovingly hand crafted invitation from one of your users, you really, always, need to provide a way for people to tell you to stop. Because if you don't stop it at your end, they will stop it at theirs.


  posted at: 23:12 :: permanent link to this entry :: 4 comments
Stable link is https://jl.ly/Email/linkspam.html

Topics


My other sites

Who is this guy?

Airline ticket info

Taughannock Networks

Other blogs

CAUCE
It turns out you don’t need a license to hunt for spam.
5 days ago

A keen grasp of the obvious
Italian Apple Cake
563 days ago

Related sites

Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail

Network Abuse Clearinghouse

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