🚀 go-pugleaf

cro@socrates.ed.asu.edu (C. R. Oldham) writes:

>I received an unsolicited email message from abacus@global.gwinnet.com
>today.  It was blatantly advertising the services of Abacus Global
>Support, Inc.  I thought this kind of thing was illegal--or at least
>not within the spirit of the Internet!

Same problem here. There are no written rules concerning Usenet,
the unwritten rule is that no advertisemnts are sent. I suspect
that these idiots have gathered addresses from Usenet postings,
which is very simple, and have send e-mail to a selection of them.

I've already sent them a note telling me that they pissed me off
and that I will never give any business to them.

I'm not too familiar with US law concerning the gathering of
addresses, but it is illegal to have such a database in my country.
(I mean, you can have any database you want, but you must register
that fact and than there are some rules about having to
consent to being in the database, government exempted as always).

Automating these forms of advertising is very simple and furthermore
it is receiver paid and should therefor not be tolerated.

The last paragraph of my reply read:

`` May your mailbox overflow with hate mail ''

As you probaby know, this is an old Usenet curse.

How many more people have received e-mail from Abacus Global Support?

If a large number of people has received this shit, we'd better
take a firm stance and flame these people (out of business,
if need be).

(cross-posted to news.admin.misc as that group seems appropriate too,
the original article appeared in comp.mail.misc and includes
the advertisement)

Casper

In <1992Oct3.010042.15366@fwi.uva.nl> casper@fwi.uva.nl (Casper H.S. Dik) writes:
>cro@socrates.ed.asu.edu (C. R. Oldham) writes:
>>I received an unsolicited email message from abacus@global.gwinnet.com
>>today.  It was blatantly advertising the services of Abacus Global

>Same problem here. There are no written rules concerning Usenet,
>the unwritten rule is that no advertisemnts are sent. ....

Ditto.  I tried  to  bouce their message back to them but it was returned
"address unknow".
-- 
If any given program runs correctly, it is obsolete.
=========================================================================
Andrew Lawrence, Informaticien Conseil           |  alawrenc@sobeco.com
3605 St-Urbain, #1605                            |  uunet!sobeco!alawrenc

To: abaqus@guinnett.com postmaster@emory.mathcs.emory.edu postmaster@hubcap.clemson.edu
Subject: Unsolicited Advertisement

Some may disagree, but I believe that mailing unsolicited advertisements is not
acceptable use for the Internet.  As of yesterday, six individuals at WPI had
received the advertisement for "Abacus Global Support".  The individual mail
messages (apparently the vendor didn't understand SMTP bulk delivery of their
junk mail) were routed via Emory and arrived from approximately 13:48 through
15:17.

Observing the postings in news.admin.misc this morning, I find that others
suffered similar distributions.

Although Emory and Clemson may consider their serving mail and addresses for
this business is some sort of public service (or is it done for a fee?), I
think those universities should rethink their association with an organization
which appears to have unethical business practices.

Part of the header of one of the messages:

> From abacus@gwinnett.COM Fri Oct  2 13:48:40 1992
> Message-Id: <m0maqZ6-00014rC@gwinnett.Gwinnett.COM>
> Date: Fri, 2 Oct 92 13:13 EDT
> From: abacus@gwinnett.COM (Abacus Global Support)
> To: global.list@Gwinnett.COM

I got this mail, and I'm in the UK.  I don't know about casper@nl, but
over here, it traversed a network that's for non-commercial use only.
This is simply unacceptable.

I notice the following things:

a) the To: field is global.list@gwinnett.com - clearly it is 'gwinnett'
   (a private network provider?) who maintain this mailing list
b) 'global.gwinnett.com' and 'gwinnett.com' are not listed in the DNS
   as machine names, but both of them have MX records for
   'emory.mathcs.emory.edu' and 'hubcap.clemson.edu'. Maybe someone
   ought to talk to these universities.

i too got said e-mail.  i forwarded the message to the postmaster
accounts at all the machines through which the message had travelled,
informing them that the message violated NSF usage, with a copy to 
the sender.

lets see if this helps... should have respsonses by monday.
-- 
--- bob pasker
---- rbp@netcom.com

In article <1992Oct3.231047.12562@netcom.com> rbp@netcom.com (Bob Pasker) writes:
>i too got said e-mail.  i forwarded the message to the postmaster
>accounts at all the machines through which the message had travelled,
>informing them that the message violated NSF usage, with a copy to 
>the sender.
>
>lets see if this helps... should have respsonses by monday.
>-- 
>--- bob pasker
>---- rbp@netcom.com

A user on my UUCP system (tweekco) received the same message.  I sent a
message asking for an explanation on the list, and the post to the list...
global-list@gwinnett.com and to todd@gwinnett (who is listed as the sysadmin
at gwinnett).  My user, nor I have received any message back yet.

gwinnett shows in the uucp maps as being in Georgia, while abacus mentions
an address of Florida.  global.gwinnett.com does not appear in the current
connects for gwinnett.com.

       tweek@netcom.com  tweek@tweekco.uucp  WWIVNet 5@5058  4@5056 
          I'd rather get my cable service from the phone company,
                than my phone service from the cable company.

casper@fwi.uva.nl (Casper H.S. Dik) writes:

>cro@socrates.ed.asu.edu (C. R. Oldham) writes:

>>I received an unsolicited email message from abacus@global.gwinnet.com
>>today.  It was blatantly advertising the services of Abacus Global
>>Support, Inc.  I thought this kind of thing was illegal--or at least
>>not within the spirit of the Internet!

>Same problem here. There are no written rules concerning Usenet,
>the unwritten rule is that no advertisemnts are sent. I suspect
>that these idiots have gathered addresses from Usenet postings,
>which is very simple, and have send e-mail to a selection of them.

>I've already sent them a note telling me that they pissed me off
>and that I will never give any business to them.

That's your option.

>I'm not too familiar with US law concerning the gathering of
>addresses, but it is illegal to have such a database in my country.
>(I mean, you can have any database you want, but you must register
>that fact and than there are some rules about having to
>consent to being in the database, government exempted as always).

That's pretty amazing...what restriction on one's ability to gather and store information...especially since you say your government is allowed to.

>If a large number of people has received this shit, we'd better
>take a firm stance and flame these people (out of business,
>if need be).

Fine. Let's really narrow the bandwidth and dump half the "alt." hierarchy at the same time.

Actually, I'm just being facetious...I think you've really overblown the Abacus deal...remember, if you don't like a message, you can always - and easily - DELETE it! ;^>

startrek@milton.u.washington.edu (Michael Breckenridge) writes:

>casper@fwi.uva.nl (Casper H.S. Dik) writes:

>>I'm not too familiar with US law concerning the gathering of
>>addresses, but it is illegal to have such a database in my country.
>>(I mean, you can have any database you want, but you must register
>>that fact and than there are some rules about having to
>>consent to being in the database, government exempted as always).

>That's pretty amazing...what restriction on one's ability to gather and store information...especially since you say your government is allowed to.

The government also has to some rules to abiide by. But, as always
with government, they can do anything they want.

>>If a large number of people has received this shit, we'd better
>>take a firm stance and flame these people (out of business,
>>if need be).

>Fine. Let's really narrow the bandwidth and dump half the "alt." hierarchy at the same time.

We've chosen to receive alt, we've not chosen to receive
junk mail. We pay for those people advertising.

>Actually, I'm just being facetious...I think you've really overblown the Abacus deal...remember, if you don't like a message, you can always - and easily - DELETE it! ;^>

Really. There are hundreds of companiews on the internet and
there are hundreds of companies receiving usenet. It's
not the one message that's bothering me. But if
these people get away with it, we'll be getting hundreds
of junk mail messages all from different addresses so you
won't be able to delete the messages easily.


Casper

casper@fwi.uva.nl (Casper H.S. Dik) writes:
>cro@socrates.ed.asu.edu (C. R. Oldham) writes:
>
>>I received an unsolicited email message from abacus@global.gwinnet.com
>>today.  It was blatantly advertising the services of Abacus Global
>>Support, Inc.  I thought this kind of thing was illegal--or at least
>>not within the spirit of the Internet!

Count me among the victims.

>I've already sent them a note telling me that they pissed me off
>and that I will never give any business to them.

ditto

Is there anything we can do aside from sending them hate mail?

-- 
Oh, why didn't I listen when they said "Never do a   |  cwes1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz 
 masters and try to have a life at the same time"?   |  clare west
                 BigSis to Chris, Eric and Kristiina
                    Official Welcomer of the RFA

Like AG129, at my site, I received this advertising trash. I am
astonished that anyone has the temerity, let alone the stupidity, to
send that message out. Quite apart from anything else, their
targetting must have been minimal - no message I have ever sent could
possibly have led them to suspect I wanted their services.

It is almost certainly illegal to send commercial advertising over the
United Kingdom's Joint Academic Network, and I expect something will
be done about it. It has also crossed my mind that the company would
certainly have to be registered under the Data Protection Act if they
were operating in the UK with such a database of personal information.
It might be the case that they have to declare such data if they are
going to use it within the UK, even if they are not based here - if
so, I doubt they have.

I sent mail to abacus@global.gwinnett.com (Cc:-ed to my local
postmaster), and it didn't bounce. Hopefully every recipient will
personally express complaint in a similar way.

Advice on any more effective action I can take against these people
would be gratefully received - I detest this practice, and would like
to see it prevented, so I'm prepared to spend a little time persuing
them...

Thanks,

--Clive.

Talk about over-reaction.  I am quite certain that the number of
annoyed replies and bad publicity they got will be more than enough
to educate and punish them for sending this mail.

Fact is that most people would have already known it would attain this
negative result, so it really doesn't matter what sort of punishment
is meted out.  Only people unaware of the punishment would do such
a blind mailing, so deterrent is not possible.

Myself, I am 100% in favour of electronic junk mail replacing the
vast gobs of dead trees that land in my physical mailbox every day.
Once we lay down the patterns so that proper headers are placed on
the junk mail, then it's far better.  My computer can screen my junk
mail before I see it, something that doesn't happen on paper.  For
more details on this argument, please see comp.org.eff.talk where I
posted before this thread began here.

And calm down on this one.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Sunnyvale, CA 408/296-0366

In article <1992Oct05.084013.24430@clarinet.com> brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton) writes:
>Myself, I am 100% in favour of electronic junk mail replacing the
>vast gobs of dead trees that land in my physical mailbox every day.

I've already taken adequate measures to stop physical junk mail. There are
also sufficient regulations to stop me receiving junk e-mail from within the
UK. The problem comes with international cowboys.

I believe the UK powers-that-be might do something about this incident soon...

--Clive.

In the referenced article brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton) writes:

>Myself, I am 100% in favour of electronic junk mail replacing the
>vast gobs of dead trees that land in my physical mailbox every day.
>Once we lay down the patterns so that proper headers are placed on
>the junk mail, then it's far better.
[more about screening said deleted]

Aww, c'mon, brad, do you really think Madison Avenue is going to abide
by header standards?  Gimme a break!  This is USENET, for Seldon's sake,
and there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to keep them from pulling every stunt
in the book to keep you from hitting a key and consigning them to the
bitbucket where they belong.  Oh, you meant e-mail?  See previous 
arguments.  

Besides, (a) there ARE ways to make paper without killing trees,
if our governments would bother to let us (but that's another rant),
and (b) it's much easier to scrawl a note in the margin of an ad 
than to punt the article to a file, go edit it, make sure you can
tell your own changes from the orignal text, make sure you didn't
delete anything vital, and then come up with some creative filename
so you don't lose it in that morass which comes out when we goof up
and type "ls" on our top-level directories... Naah, much rather
get it paper, it's a break from the CRT.  

-- Glenn R. Stone (glenns@eas.gatech.edu)
Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Tech
(not that they REALLY want to claim my opinions....:)
GOOD HONEST *HEMP*!  -- Wilson

In <startrek.718217180@milton> startrek@milton.u.washington.edu (Michael Breckenridge) writes:

>Actually, I'm just being facetious...I think you've really overblown the Abacus deal...remember, if you don't like a message, you can always - and easily - DELETE it! ;^>

but can i reverse the charges??

bill pociengel
--
llbi locgeenpi " i'm a little confused right now"

In <1992Oct4.231717.11307@cs.aukuni.ac.nz> cwes1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (Clare West) writes:

>Is there anything we can do aside from sending them hate mail?

not much that isn't any worse than what they did.
seeing as bombing runs and such are generally considered not very
nice either.
(no smiles)
bill pociengel
--
llbi locgeenpi " i'm a little confused right now"

alawrenc@sobeco.com (a.lawrence) writes:

:In <1992Oct3.010042.15366@fwi.uva.nl> casper@fwi.uva.nl (Casper H.S. Dik) writes:
:>cro@socrates.ed.asu.edu (C. R. Oldham) writes:
:>>I received an unsolicited email message from abacus@global.gwinnet.com
:>>today.  It was blatantly advertising the services of Abacus Global
:
:>Same problem here. There are no written rules concerning Usenet,
:>the unwritten rule is that no advertisemnts are sent. ....
:
:Ditto.  I tried  to  bouce their message back to them but it was returned
:"address unknow".

What CREEPS!  They also sent the same unsolicited message to me, here
in Italy, including such ROFL sentences as "we speak your language"
(they DON'T! speak Italian actually, just marketspeak!) AND advertising
opening times designed such that taking timezones into account they
would NEVER coincide with Italian office hours, AND as main contact
points *800*-numbers (which CANNOT be called from Italy...!).  Just
to underscore that they just sent it to "everybody" without even the
common courtesy of checking AT ALL for the appropriateness of the
message for the adresseee... CREEPS, as I said.
-- 
Email: martelli@cadlab.sublink.org                   Phone: ++39 (51) 6130360
CAD.LAB s.p.a., v. Ronzani 7/29, Casalecchio, Italia   Fax: ++39 (51) 6130294 

crj10@phx.cam.ac.uk (Clive Jones) writes:

>I've already taken adequate measures to stop physical junk mail. There are
>also sufficient regulations to stop me receiving junk e-mail from within the
>UK. The problem comes with international cowboys.

>I believe the UK powers-that-be might do something about this incident soon...

I have an idea.  Why don't you delicate Brit Pussys just pull your internet
plug?  That'll stop your junk mail for sure.  Most other users can simply
hit the "d" key or whatever their mailer uses to delete a message.

John
-- 
John De Armond, WD4OQC               |Interested in high performance mobility?  
Performance Engineering Magazine (TM) |
Marietta, Ga                         |Interested in high tech and computers? 
jgd@dixie.com                        |Write me about PE Magazine
Need Usenet public Access in Atlanta?  Write Me for info on Dixie.com.

cwes1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (Clare West) writes:

>casper@fwi.uva.nl (Casper H.S. Dik) writes:
>>cro@socrates.ed.asu.edu (C. R. Oldham) writes:
>>
>>>I received an unsolicited email message from abacus@global.gwinnet.com
>>>today.  It was blatantly advertising the services of Abacus Global
>>>Support, Inc.  I thought this kind of thing was illegal--or at least
>>>not within the spirit of the Internet!

>Count me among the victims.

>>I've already sent them a note telling me that they pissed me off
>>and that I will never give any business to them.

>Is there anything we can do aside from sending them hate mail?

I heard that the marketing director at Abacus Global Support, Inc.
was dying of cancer.  He has a last wish to see if he can break the
Guiness Book of World Records for the number of sympathy cards
received before he dies.  I don't have a mailing address but perhaps
someone who got email from Global could post it?  Can everyone help
out?

Please post to as many groups as you can...

Oh yeah,

:-) :-) :-)

(I hope I didn't start something...)

Robert
--
| Robert L. Howard              |   Georgia Tech Research Institute     |
| robert.howard@matd.gatech.edu |   MATD Laboratory                     |
| (404) 528-7165                |   Atlanta, Georgia  30332             |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
| "See, when the GOVERNMENT spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when |
| the money is left in the hands of TAXPAYERS, God only knows what they |
| do with it.  Bake it into pies, probably.  Anything to avoid creating |
| jobs." -- Dave Barry                                                  |

jgd@dixie.com (John De Armond) writes:

>crj10@phx.cam.ac.uk (Clive Jones) writes:

>>I've already taken adequate measures to stop physical junk mail. There are
>>also sufficient regulations to stop me receiving junk e-mail from within the
>>UK. The problem comes with international cowboys.

>>I believe the UK powers-that-be might do something about this incident soon...

>I have an idea.  Why don't you delicate Brit Pussys just pull your internet
>plug?  That'll stop your junk mail for sure.  Most other users can simply
>hit the "d" key or whatever their mailer uses to delete a message.

Nah! Bombing runs are usually quite effective.
But man pages? Jeez!!!

I usually return all junk mail but not to the original company. Collect a few
together, swap the return envelopes and send it back. It's amazing how
quickly your name gets removed from the mailing lists!!

Dave (Junk snail mail free)

--