Spam - SocialTimes.com

Has Facebook Killed Email? [Infographic]

Kenna McHugh — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 11:30:17 +0000

These days, if I meet a new friend we add each other to Facebook. If the person is particularly fascinating, I try to get their Twitter. If it’s a work colleague, I ask them to link me on LinkedIn. Email is an afterthought. But Visible Gains has done some work to really figure out the answer to the tough question — is email dead?
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Software Determines the Potential Risk of New Twitter Followers [Infographic]

Kenna McHugh — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:00:55 +0000

Security company Safego will roll out security software for Twitter this week. The software identifies contacts that are potentially a security threat.
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

AT&T Advice and Instructions for Dealing with Text Message Spam

Todd Ogasawara — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 06:08:03 +0000

A couple of spam text messages hit my iPhone recently. So, I tweeted a question to AT&T Wireless’s Customer Care Twitter account to learn what advice they might offer. You can see the response in the screenshot above. AT&T’s advice to use the word STOP to block messages is, it turns out, specifically to deal with messages from Short Code numbers. However, AT&T provides ways to deal with other kind of text message spam on this web support page.
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Privachi Scatters Your Data Online to Secure Your User Information

Kenna McHugh — Fri, 06 May 2011 15:49:04 +0000

A few of my friends rage over how much time is consumed in repairing or trying to stop viruses on Facebook. So, when I hear about platforms that lock social networking sites, I want to know more.
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Facebook Users Can Now Start “Using Protection”

Kenna McHugh — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 09:35:32 +0000

You can now share with your friends on Facebook knowing that you are “using protection” and will not spread any social media diseases.
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

McAfee: Malware Attacks On Mobile Devices Growing Rapidly

Bilal Hameed — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 09:35:54 +0000

With the tremendous rise in the popularity of smart phones, they have also become a prime target for cyber criminals. According to McAfee, the malware attacks on smart phones and other mobile devices connected to internet rose by 46 percent in 2010 to 967 threats, compared to 704 threats that McAfee registered on mobile devices in 2009.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Reunion.com Experiences Remarkable Growth, Not Shocking

nickoneill — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:59:56 +0000

Today I received a press release from Reunion.com notifying me that they had successfully added a whopping 1.6 million new members in June, beating out LinkedIn according to comScore. This is nothing compared to the more 9 million added by Facebook in the same month but Reunion.com is in another class. So how did they get the boost in traffic?

As I’ve previously covered, Reunion.com spams the friends of everybody that joins the site. It encourages users to check their email contact list to see if their friends are on the site. If their friends aren’t on the site it automatically sends an email to their contact list without notifying the users. This is a standard tactic which has been used countless times including by Plaxo which initially grew their user base with aggressive spam tactics.

As I wrote earlier this month, this isn’t the only violation of privacy that Reunion.com has made. As one article put it, “Reunion.comÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s privacy policy says the site Ã¢â‚¬Ëœprohibits registration by and will not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from anyone under 13.Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ But that doesnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t address the siteÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s own data-gathering.”

There is a very good chance that all of these privacy violations, regardless of the company’s remarkable growth is going to result in a lawsuit. According to sources of mine, there are individuals that are looking to sue the company for overly aggressive marketing techniques. The funny thing is how public Reunion.com’s tactics are. Perhaps this is one thing that would protect them in court.

If you Google “Reunion.com”, the first page contains multiple articles referencing the company’s email spam tactics. Growth is great for the company but sacrificing user privacy and user trust to grow your company isn’t a solid long-term strategy.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Reunion.com Uses Plaxo Style Spam Tactics

nickoneill — Tue, 20 May 2008 18:29:21 +0000

Plaxo.com, the company acquired last week by Comcast for a rumored $160 million, was launched back in 2001. The company faced heavy criticism for aggressive spam techniques which used user contact lists to send out false invites to users. Reunion.com has decided to leverage a similar tactic in hopes of rapidly expanding their user base.

While the tactics have appeared to work (based on Alexa statistics), this strategy is not a long-term solution and is a quick way to lose users faster than you gain them. Take a look at the screenshot below from a search for “Reunion.com” on Summize. The majority of comments are from angry people complaining about how Reunion.com abused users’ trust.

Only one of the users thought it was a genuine email but chose not to respond to it because he prefers to communicate via Facebook and Twitter. Screw using Facebook to spread your website or application virally, you can import peoples’ Gmail contact list and spam the hell out of them! Honestly, this has to be one of the most misleading tactics for a website to leverage.

Following stagnant growth through February it appears that the site decided to take drastic measures. Unfortunately those measures are going to end up backfiring. Reunion.com staff: drop the spam tactics or witness a mass exodus from your site. Then again I’d guess that the exodus has already begun taking place as users move to Facebook.

Have you received these emails? Do you see any benefit of using these tactics?

Sample Email 1

Sample Email 2

Twitter Search Screenshot

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

MySpace Wins Fight Against Spammer

nickoneill — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 11:30:04 +0000

Last night at precisely 11:30 PM EST, some computer was triggered somewhere in the world that began bombarding my site with spam emails. Within 30 minutes I had received over 3,000 spam emails. I was able to devise a system to block the spam but the bottom line is that spam is a serious problem for many of us, especially if you are a MySpace user.

When was the last time you received a friend invite from an attractive lady friend who really just wanted you to check out her cam site? It happens to all of us that are on the site and it was one of the primary reasons that many users ended up leaving the site. Well, according to News.com, one of the spammers, Sanford Wallace was ordered to turn over documents to the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California and failed to do so.

So it appears that the judgment against Wallace is simply a statement but there has been no monetary judgment as of yet. Wallace is never far from the hot seat though as he lost a number of previous suits and in one instance was “ordered by a federal court to turn over $4,089,500.” From the sounds of things it appears that Wallace is still running from the law. I’m not quite sure how Wallace is making his money but if my MySpace friend requests are any indication, he was probably selling memberships to webcam sites.

Aside from that, I’m not quite sure how some of these spammers generate money especially when they decide to bombard inboxes with thousands of messages in a relatively short span of time. While the fight against spam is nowhere near finished, this is one loss for the spammers. Unfortunately, there is no telling whether this will have any impact on future spam prevalence on the most popular social networking site on the web.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.