So I fire up  Fiddler2 – an invaluable tool to see what’s going on under the hood of the communication between your web browser and the web server. I look at the client and server HTTP headers and see something interesting:

1) Download via Chrome

CLIENT:

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0) AppleWebKit/534.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/12.0.742.122 Safari/534.30
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch

SERVER:

Content-Type: binary/octet-stream
Content-Length: 26176425
Server: AmazonS3

2) Download via IE for a file that can be downloaded:

CLIENT:

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.0; Trident/5.0)
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate

SERVER:

Content-Type: binary/octet-stream
Content-Length: 26176425
Server: AmazonS3

3) Download via IE for a file that can NOT be downloaded:

CLIENT:

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.0; Trident/5.0)
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate

SERVER:

Content-Type: application/x-zip-compressed
Content-Length: 687411306
Server: AmazonS3


It was a consistent pattern: every time the Content-Type of a file was x-zip-compressed, I couldn’t download . It might have something to do with MS KB 841120: the server that recompresses .zip files with gzip, and the browser mis-interpreting.

Anyway, I used CloudBerry S3 Explorer to go and explicitly change  every file’s HTTP headers and now I can download all files with IE. If I ever forget about this IE quirk, now I’ve written down the solution!

Furthermore they claim that

• I supposedly have published the home address of Mr Benlolo on my blog. I have checked and in none of my blog posts about the DROA (DROA scam, Govern yourselves accordingly and DROA: the saga continues) have I published any address belonging to a person: all addresses are PO Boxes – so not physical addresses – belonging to companies, not persons. These addresses I have found either on the letters what were sent by the DROA or on their web site.
  The letter I received actually shows Mr Benlolo’s address, and I can confirm it is nowhere on my blog. Other unhappy customers might have done that on other blogs/forums, but not me.
• I am supposed to remove the three blog posts mentioned above ASAP. I have reread all three and in each I just cite known convictions of persons and companies involved, as well as reactions from institutions like the  FTC and Better Business Bureaus who all disapprove of the type of business that the DROA is active in.
• Interestingly I’m also supposed to remove a fourth blog post “Amy Cross is spamming Technorati” which I did not know was related. Maybe it’s just because there’s a link to the DROA article.

I have gotten seven days to comply, and that period has just expired. I have tried to contact the lawyers but no one has bothered to call me back. I don’t agree with their claims, and I still stand by the blog posts I have written.

Then in March 2007, they contacted me to demand the removal of the blog posts, if not they would sue me for an Ontario court. “Govern yourself accordingly” showed that I was not impressed with that threat.

Now the saga continues: I have been contacted by a Gilbert Duchanan in an effort to make me remove my blog posts. It started on last Aug 19, with a short email. “I represent a company that is currently in talks to acquire the company Domain Registry of America. Upon searching on Google we discovered links to negative articles on your blog regarding the company. What would it take to have you remove the article(s) found at (…) Gilbert“. Just a first name, not a “Legal representative”, “Customer relations” or anything. That’s kind of weird for a legal person.

I replied: “Dear Mr Duchanan, I find it hard to believe that a company with honest and bona-fide practices would be interested in taking over the heritage of the DRoA. So unless you could convince me of the opposite, I will just assume that the scam will continue, and I will not take away the articles. Please be aware that this conversation could end up on my blog too.    Peter” Who knows, it might develop into a good story. I of course expected to have legal threats at some point.

The next day, a reply, again from ‘Gilbert’. Mind you, I still had no idea who he worked for.

For the past 2 months we have been conducting our due diligence regarding Domain Registry of America (DROA). We have seen negative publicity towards some of their advertising practices causing us to question the company about it. DROA has provided us with documentation from the United States Federal Trade Commission, The British Advertising Standards Authority, and The Canadian Competition Bureau. These organizations are the governing bodies for advertising in their respective countries. The documents we have been provided with show complete compliance with their respective country’s laws. We are fully aware of previous matters dating back to 2002 and 2003 with the FTC and ASA but these issues have been resolved. These dated matters do not concern us as we are aware that most fortune 500 companies have and continue to resolve matters brought on by the FTC and other governing bodies.

Our audits have shown that the company has hundreds of thousands of customers under their management that continue to renew their domains and domain related services. This shows us that their clients must be satisfied with their service, support, and pricing in the extremely competitive domain name industry. It is unfortunate that the number of complaints online pale in comparison to the number of satisfied customers that DROA has. We have found similar numbers of complaints about the top ten registrars as well. While we cannot address every online complaint we will do our best to make contact with members of the general public, like yourself, in an attempt to address your concerns.

Well, ok, let’s see what is true in this statement.

1. Federal Trade Commission: there is a 2003 complaint that was resulted in an order as follows (without the legalese): “IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that, (…) Defendant, (…) are hereby permanently restrained and enjoined from making (…) any false or misleading statement or representation (…) that the transfer of a domain name registration is a renewal.”
   This is the letter they still send in 2008 (at the right): “You must renew your domain name to retain exlusive rights …“
2. The Canadian Competition Bureau had the following dealings with the same company: Internet Registry director fined for bogus invoice scam (June 2004)
3. The British ASA formulated their opinion as recent as 2009: ASA Adjudication on Domain Registry of America:
   

   “We noted the mailing stated “This notice is not a bill …”, “You are under no obligation to pay the amounts stated below …” and “… now is the time to transfer and renew your name from your current Registrar to the Domain renewal Group …”, but did not consider it was sufficient to remove the overall impression that the mailing was a genuine bill requiring payment. We concluded that the mailing was misleading for falsely implying that recipients had already transferred their domain name to DRG and for not making sufficiently clear that it was a marketing communication. (…) The mailing must not appear again in its current form.”

4. While I’m researching: let’s see with the USA Better Busines Bureau says: Rating F on a scale from A+ to F: because of “177 complaints filed against business, Failure to respond to 11 complaints filed against business, 26 complaints filed against business that were not resolved, 1 serious complaint filed against business“
5. “the issues have been resolved” – I still get comments on both my blog posts that the same practices as in 2004 continue.

Before I reply, Gilbert sends me another mail: “Our 90 day due diligence period is coming to an end and we have not received a response from you regarding our previous email. We would like to provide you with more information about our company, but as we are a publicly traded company on the U.S. NASDAQ exchange, we cannot disclose any information regarding mergers and acquisitions to anyone outside the Board, as this would be in violation of the rules and procedures of the Exchange.”

So I answer on Sept 1st:

“The company we are talking about, has a history of conducting business in a shady and immoral way. I do not find enough verifiable elements in this conversation to assume that this behaviour has stopped / would stop. If you are indeed who you say you are, your due diligence will have to take note of the abundance of negative goodwill surrounding the company. It will take a lot of effort to clean up that reputation.”

Mr Duchanan does not give up and answers 2 weeks later:

Thank you for your response. In regards to your statement of the company “conducting business  in a shady and immoral way” could you please be more specific. If you are referring to their marketing practices, what is it that you find different than that of the United States Federal Trade Commission, The British Advertising Standards Authority, and The Canadian Competition Bureau.

(…)

The marketing material was designed to clearly inform domain owners of their upcoming domain expiry and offer them the opportunity to switch registrars if they so desire. We can provide you with a copy of the solicitation that will show that there is no possibility of deceit or trickery involved in the material. The solicitation clearly states the below

“You must renew your domain name to retain exclusive rights to it on the Web, and now is the time to transfer and renew your name from your current Registrar to the Domain Registry of America. “

It also states:

“Domain name holders are not obligated to renew their domain name with their current Registrar or with the Domain Registry of America. Review our prices and decide for yourself. You are under no obligation to pay the amounts stated below, unless you accept this offer. This notice is not a bill, it is rather an easy means of payment should you decide to switch your domain name registration to the Domain Registry of America.”

The wording of this solicitation shows clear intent to inform prospective customers of their options.

Well, the BBB, the ASA, some 20000 pages online and me find this intent less clear. We all seem to think that the letters are intently misleading.

By now, I’m getting annoyed that Mr Duchanan does not want to tell me who he’s working for. Actually, I suspect there is no Gilbert Duchanan, and that it’s just a decoy for someone who, I presume, works for DROA.

Dear Mr Duchanan,

you contact me via a Gmail account, without any indication of what company you work for, without any phone number, without any professional credentials whatsoever. You could be telling the truth, or not. I have no way to verify your identity or links with the current/former owners of DROA. If you are serious about this, provide me with the coordinates of your office, your boss, some references.

If I see the comments on my own blog and on other blogs reporting on DROA, the scam practices are still continuing in the same form as before (complaints even in Sept 2010). I still see no reason to change my opinion, or my publication.

Peter

And today the reply came. Do I know now who he is, or who he works for? Of course not. My comments are [inline].

As mentioned in my previous emails we are a publicly traded company who has yet to announce our acquisition although we have entered into a definitive agreement to purchase all the outstanding shares of the holding company that owns and operates DROA. Therefore if I provide you with the information you request it will expose who we are and therefore violate the rules of the Exchange. I hope you would find by the tone of our emails and all the inside knowledge and information we have provided to you that I am an insider with the company. [an insider to what company? the one that is presumed to acquire DROA or DROA itsel?. Of course you're an insider. Why would you contact me otherwise?]

It is disturbing to us that you would use the word “scam” in this email as well as on your blog. The word “scam” implies an act of theft or dishonesty, an act which we know the company does not practice in and must address our shareholders and the public will demand it. [It may be so that the company does not find its practices hishonest, but every professional body and several hundreds of victims do.]

While everyone in this world is entitled to their opinion, when published or said, should that opinion be false, misleading, or defamatory, it becomes slander. We have provided you with enough information to ensure you that all material produced by the company conforms to its local regulations. If you are uncertain as to the validity of the information we provided you with, you are always welcome as an individual to contact the entity in question to ensure its validity. [Of course I'm 'uncertain' about the validity of your claims. You won't even tell me who you work for. So which entities should I contact? The FTC, CCB, ASA, BBB?]

Therefore anyone publishing the word “scam” or any other wording along those lines in their opinion regarding the company, it is slander. Once the acquisition is completed and we have moved all of DROAs operations to our New York offices we would like to invite you, at our expense (flight and hotel), to come to our office in New York City so we can offer you a tour of our facility. [Sure, as if that is going to happen.]

We would like to resolve this issue with you in an orderly fashion but if all else fails we will have no option but to utilize the legal system here in America. We have hopefully tried to the best of our ability to satisfy your concerns but it appears we are not succeeding. If we provide you with the contact information to our Corporate Attorney will you please forward it to yours so they may be in contact with each other in hopes of resolving the issue? [Ah, a legal treat! I was waiting for that! I will indeed ask for contact info of your Corporate Attorney.

To be continued …

Recently I investigated web fax services like eFax, WebFax, RingCentral but for a low volume user like me they’re too expensive. You pay a lot of money for having a dedicated phone number for you, regardless of the number of faxes you send/receive. But I already have a dedicated telephone number, only it is completely disconnected from my ‘normal’ workflow: email, web, news reader. I would like to receive my faxes in my Gmail, because I never delete mails. With 7GB+ email storage, I don’t need to.

So what I would like to have, and what I don’t think exists yet: a Fax 2.0 device at home, let’s call it the FaxaPorta. It needs power and a phone connection, and … that’s all. So let’s make it look like this (not uninfluenced by the Apple Airport Express):

Here’s how it works:

• You plug the Faxaporta in a power outlet and connect to the phone plug.
• The device has built-in wifi and will connect to the internet in that way.
• You associate the device with your account on the Faxaporta website.
• Now you can configure how it is supposed to work:
  • Incoming fax: send it to an email address as a PDF file, print it (you can connect a printer to the USB port)
  • Incoming voice call: take a voice mail and send it to an email address as a MP3 file, forward the call via Skype
  • Outgoing fax: behave like a network printer, or you upload a PDF file to the Faxaporta web site (it is then downloaded by your own Faxaporta device and sent over your own phone line).
• But because your fax is now part of your web-connected world you can do cool stuff like:

• When you get a fax/voice call, the Caller ID (phone number of the sender) is being matched with your Google contacts to add name, company and email of the sender.
• The faxes your receive pass through Faxaportas service and are OCR’ed so that you can copy/paste the text on it (cf. the ScanR service).
• The voicemails are run through a speech recognition service so that you get a text transcript together with the MP3 file. (Google Voice has this)
• The whole configuring of the fax/voice service is no longer done on a silly small screen on the fax machine with 15 cryptic buttons, but online, from anywhere you want. New response message? Upload the MP3 file! New front sheet for outgoing faxes? Create it in a WYSIWYG editor!
• You have an RSS feed for your incoming fax messages, one for your incoming voicemails.

• try to route a fax to the right person (depending on who sent it, on names that were OCR’ed in the document)
• set up a Interactive Voice Response system through the browser (“For Sales, press 1”).
• create a searchable fax archive
• How about a fax ‘out-of-office’ service?

Does the Faxaporta exist already?

So I decided to let Facebook check my Gmail contact list to see if I had missed some contacts (people using aliases, etc …). After carefully selecting a couple of FB friends to invite (a buddy from the army, …), I clicked ‘Select’ and then ‘OK’ on the next screen that I supposed was a ‘Confirm’ window. I didn’t even read what was written on it. Some minutes later I saw emails starting to come in on different email aliases I had created in all my years of Internet activity. Apparently I allowed Facebook to send email messages to all Gmail contacts with email addresses that were not yet ‘known’ in Facebook. I have about 1500 addresses in my Gmail, let’s say some 500 already have a FB profile: so I just allowed Facebook to send out 1000 ‘unsollicited commercial emails’ or *spam* on my behalf. There is no way for me to know how many emails went out, nor to whom. I feel strongly embarrased, since I have been a strong opponent of spam for years, and since I have no idea who I have bothered with this bulk mail.

A company like Facebook probably has a whole team concentrated on user experience and workflow streamlining, so I can only assume that this strategy is by design. They probably have to keep the monthly exponential growth numbers so they use every opportunity to collect new email addresses. This is plain wrong. The default should be ‘opt in‘, not ‘opt out‘ (that is, select those you want to invite instead of unselect those you don’t wanto to invite).

So dear Christopher Cox and/or Chamath Palihapitiya at Facebook, while you will probably say that ‘but it is clearly written on the page that they’re about to send an invitation to (in my case, 1000??) contacts‘, you know that you are wrong on this one. You’re spamming. Big time, like real jerks. Since you’re probably not going to do anything about it, Google: any ideas?

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=46004a5733eee4f0&hl=en

http://blogs.zdnet.com/social/?p=266

http://www.smartmobs.com/2007/09/02/facebook-friending-spam/

• First try: I order the keyboard, do the checkout procedure, pay with credit-card and get an immediate reaction: purchase OK, shipment will follow soon. Wow, that’s slick. Several days later, UPS passes by my front door while I’m not there, they say, the package is signed off by a certain “Korenberg” and I get an email: delivery OK. Slight alarm bell: I know no “Korenberg” living at my appartment. When I get home this is confirmed: no one in the building knows anyone by that name. Keyboard is in the twilight zone. I file complaint with Logitech, they propose refund, I accept, I’m still waiting for confirmation. But, I still need a BG keyboard.
• Second try: I order another keyboard and try to pay with my credit card. Twice I give my credit card details, press “Process” and get redirected to the same check-out page, without any notion of whether or not my order is accepted. I check the “order history”, see that my recent purchase is not there and decide to give up on credit cards.
• I select “bank payment” and finish checkout. They tell me what bank account I should pay on (one of Bibit), and with which message. I do the payment, see that the number message is not a structured number (“gestructureerde mededeling”) and put it in the normal message box. Since then, nothing. Has Bibit recognized the money as the payment for Logitech? No idea. Has Logitech started fulfillment? I guess not.
• I visit the Logitech web site again, checking out the Squeezebox, and decide to test the checkout system again. I put a Squeezebox in my shopping cart. When I go to the customer care, I fly from shop.logitech.com (where I am logged in) to logitech-nl-emea.custhelp.com (which looks the same, but where another login is necessary, because both accounts aren’t linked, apparently). There I get into an eternal redirection loop, with an infinite number of “&cl=BE,nl” adding themselves to the URL.
• I try to break out of that loop by going back to the shopping cart page. For some reason my shopping cart now contains 2 Squeezeboxes instead of one. That’s it , I’ve had it.

Bottom line: this online shop of theirs is as trustworthy as Lindsay Lohan saying she’s gonna stop drinking. I buy online a lot from shops like Amazon and Pixmania, so I think I’m qualified to say that their shopping application stinks. I’m gonna wait until next week for reply on the second purchase, if there’s none, I’m cancelling that order, and I’m never shopping with Logitech again.

You appreciate the finer things in life. You have a split personality – wild or conservative, depending on your mood. Wherever you go, you like to travel first class. Luxury, style, and fun – who could ask for more?

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

via Clo and Ine

Further, there were almost 3,000 other eu. domain names registered and offered for sale by the same “seller”, Mr. Kurt Janusch who, nevertheless, acts on behalf of various companies in this regard

Mr. Janusch is what they call a “domain squatter” or cybersquatter. He is of the same moral fiber as US counterparts like Jeff Burgar and John Zuccarini (the latter has been arrested).

Bring a scarce resource onto the market and what do you get: speculation. This is one of the reasons why Bob Parsons from GoDaddy refers to the launch of .eu domains as the .EU Landrush fiasco.

Spider-Man 80% Superman 70% Iron Man 60% Robin 55% Supergirl 50% Wonder Woman 50% Green Lantern 50% The Flash 45% Hulk 40% Batman 25% Catwoman 25%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

via Clo

Cain is the founder and CEO of Realroot, hoster of a large collection of high-bandwidth, and often NSFW, websites – including Zattevrienden, Zattemadammen, Wijfzonderlijf, Gallerygalore and Thisislife. He is known for being a shrewd business man and not the most subtle of conversationalists. But the way he speaks about his pr0n-consuming users in this article sets a new high for self-confessed customer contempt.

Some (translated) quotes:

• (about his early days as a self-taught consultant) I could bluff my way into any company as a consultant. I would throw some complicated terms at the IT-manager I was negotiating with. Generally he was not that clever and was easily intimidated.
• (about access logs) I can see it right away when a top minister is j*rking off on one of our chicks.
• A belgian webcam visitor stays logged in for 7 minutes on average, and a Dutch one for 15 minutes. “A Dutchman w*nks at half the speed of a Belgian” concludes CR.
• I am very happy with the sex addicts, they make me a lot of money. We help them get off. Our customers are perverts, not us. (not sure how to translate “vetzak” in English)
• The eyeballs are the watchers, the w*nkers: our customers. In the posh cities (Amsterdam, London, Paris) are the watchers with money, the rich w*nkers.
• (“Aren’t the customers pathetic?”) Maybe they are. Amongst them are a lot of frustrated and sorry bastards. They have a right to our help.
• Actually, the guy just wants to talk. He’s safe at home, with his pants down, in his own house. He doesn’t want to go into therapy. Hij prefers doing his thing anonymously, with a naked virtual girl from Rumania.

It’s funny that in these days when Kathy, Seth and Tara are trying to define how you should try to treat your customer with respect and start a dialogue, there is such a blatant example of how the exact opposite can also be succesful.

Isn’t Cain afraid his customers might read the newspaper and feel offended? Frankly, I don’t think he gives a damn.