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The Belgian Facebook community is growing and I was expecting to have a first ’spam’ invitation eventually. It came a couple of days ago, from a group that goes by the name “In Loving Memory of Juliane Angel”. It seems to be created by a guy in rememberance of a girl that died some time ago (Juliane Angel). Even if this sad story is not a marketing ploy (which I don’t think it is), the invitations are still ‘unsollicited’. Whether they are ‘commercial’ is hard to say now, that might only become apparent when there are enough members (only two for the moment).

When I joined Facebook, there were only a few people on it that I knew. The last couple of weeks, there have been invitations coming in on a daily basis of people that I (sort-of) know. The typical early adaptors, of course, but also some outsiders. Juliane is the first spam attempt I get - not a full-fledged Nigerian scam or erection drug, I admit, but still. I hope Facebook can control misuse; because MySpace surely can’t.

Other articles on Facebook spam: Marketing Sherpa - Organized Confusion

I just received an email on my Hotmail account from someone that normally never contacts me. The email itself is clearly generated by an automatic process:

When I take a look at the website that was cited (I won’t link to it), it is not clear to see what the service is actually about: I’m guessing it is to see who blocked you (MSN contacts that look off-line to you, but that are actually online). To check if one of your MSN buddies has blocked you, you ‘only’ have to fill in your Hotmail username and password. This should already make you nervous: you should never give those credentials to a site that’s not Hotmail or MSN.

Take a look under the “Verder” (= “Continue”) button. In a very light gray (#dfdfdf to be exact), there is the option to email all your MSN buddies, and by default it’s ON. Since it is hardly visible, I guess most people who try out the service leave it like that and as such ‘give permission’ to send out a couple of dozen to several hundreds of emails. You only need a few gullible recipients to create a ‘viral’ effect.

In the terms and conditions on the bottom of the (very long) page, you’ll find:

6. De gebruiker die deze dienst gebruikt is zelf verantwoordelijk voor het goed bekijken van de opties alvorens hij of zij op de knop [ verder ] drukt.
7. U dient zelf de optie [ mailen naar uw MSN vrienden ] uit te vinken als u uw vrienden niet wilt mailen.
8. Er kan geen aanspraak worden gemaakt op de werking van onze diensten omdat wij het checker systeem niet zelf hosten. Wij zijn alleen een technische kant die er voor probeert tezorgen dat u contact kunt krijgen met de MSN server. De MSN server/checker kan soms offline zijn. Wij mailen absoluut zelf niet. Alle mailtjes worden door de gebruiker zelf gedaan. Hij of zij is hier dus ook zelf verantwoordelijk voor. Bij overmatig gebruik kunt u mailen naar de persoon waarvan u het mailtje heeft ontvangen. Bij gebruik van onze dienst stelt u ons vrij van enige schade aan derden.

In short:
#6: the user is responsible for verifying all options before clicking [ Continue ]
#7: you should disable the option [ send mail to all MSN friends ] if you don’t want to send those messages
#8: we don’t send the emails, the user does. If you have complaints, contact that person, not us.

I certainly don’t agree with their point #8. Technically, they send the messages. They could claim the user ‘requested it’. In any case: it’s spam!

The person responsible for the site is already known as the “Mongool van scripthosting“: ene P.J. (Peter) Bierling from Groningen.

In the last three days I have received 3 mails from Colorbar, a “lively private club for colorful people”. The first one didn’t trigger my suspicion, since I am subscribed to some music-related mailing lists. The two next mails came for 2 @forret.com aliases of which I am certain they never subscribed to any list. So I took a closer look at the email. No contact details are given, no indication of where the email addresses came from, no possibility to unsubscribe, i.e. it’s a spam mail. To be even more specific: a belgian spam message.
Continue reading ‘Colorbar: belgian spam’