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Journal wowbagger's Journal: eFax spam 22

Journal by wowbagger

I'm writing this so that, hopefully, it will be indexed by Google, and others will be able to find it.

Recently, I've been getting a lot of emails from eFax about "my eFax account".

Now, I can assure you I have not set up an eFax account - these mails are addressed to my work email. Why would I set up an eFax number for work, where I have a perfectly good fax number?

Clearly, "somebody else" signed my work email up for an eFax account. Why? Most likely to cash in on a referral program.

Now, if eFax were following accepted industry best practices, they would have sent an email to my work address saying "somebody has signed this address up for an eFax account, please respond if you really want this, otherwise do nothing and we will forget it."

They didn't.

So, in my mind this makes them spammers, pure and simple. It also makes them pretty stupid as well, as they are being ripped off by the folks cashing in on the referral program giving them bogus names. But then again, that IS rule #1 of spammers - spammers are stupid.

When this started, I did my usual - Google for "efax spam" to see if there was a raft of hits. There was not.

Well, I figure I'll put this in my Journal, and put this JE in my sig line, and with a bit of luck it will be indexed, and at least one hit will show up.

Since the raft of hits did NOT show up, and since eFax seems to be at least TRYING to act like a "rezponuble bidnizmens", I sent them a short nastygram with their last email - we shall see what comes of that.

(Before you say "Wowbagger you fool! NEVER respond to a remove link or spam!" - my work email is already comprimised - I get 20 spams a day that make it through the corporate spam filter. I've had this email address for thirteen years, and have used it in several technical forums.)

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Addendum: Withing TENS OF MINUTES of my sending them a nastygram, and receiving an auto-ack for it, they send me a spam about joining Stamps.com

So, I would call that hypothesis confirmed. Both eFax.com and Stamps.com are spammers.

And the reason I made those links is to better attract Google.

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Addendum (25 Oct 2004): Once again, eFax.com spammed me with a "How to change your eFax number" spam. Again - this was *after* they had terminated the account that I never created in the first place.

So I once again sent them a nastygram about not spamming me - this one CC'ed to their upstream net provider AND their domain registrar.

So, they respond to me - that they cannot help me change the number as they have canceled it. In other words, instead of reading the mail I sent, they just responded to the spam they sent me.

More proof - eFax.com are spammers.

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eFax spam More

eFax spam

Comments Filter:
  • I've not seen this one. Have you done a 'whois' to see who has registered the domain? I've found that a forceful but polite-ish phone call to the number on record, saying "Please stop spamming me and where did you get my name" has worked both times I felt the need to go to that point.
    • Organization:
      Register.Com
      Domain Registrar
      575 8th Avenue New York, NY 10018 US
      Phone: 212-798-9200
      Email: domain-registrar@register.com

      Registrar Name: Register.com
      Registrar Whois: whois.register.com
      Registrar Homepage: http://www.register.com

      Domain Name: EFAX.COM

      Created on Mon, Oct 26, 1998
      Expires on Tue, Oct 25, 2011
      Record last updated on Thu, Jul 08, 2004

      Administrative Contact:
      Register.Com
      Domain Registrar
      575 8th Avenue New York, NY 10018 US
      Phone: 212-798-9200
      Email: domain-registrar@register.com

      Technical
      • So, an annoyed spam recipient who felt like making a spammer's life more interesting might contact register.com with this information, ask them how it reconciles with their acceptable use policy (hint: prolly not very well), and might enjoy sitting back and watching the fireworks. I'd be happy to also ask the same question of the same domain if you think it'd help. Let me know.
        • Unfortunately, the Register.com terms of service give them a hole big enough to drive a Dyson sphere through, so I really doubt this will work.

          However, the next spam I get from these guys goes to register.com as well.

          The real beyatch of this is that the email address they are using is my older work email - we were recently aquired and the address changed. So to send it to eFax I have to reconfig to use the older address, otherwise eFax puts on their innocent hat and says "but your email address isn't in o

      • I seldom look at the domain records anyway, since any single spammer can have plenty of domains, maybe even with different registrars. I prefer concentrating on their network providers, since they are the ones actually transmitting their junk (or at least providing address space). If you compare the millions of domains assigned via your average registrar to the thousands of customers that have obtained address space from your average ISP (very rough numbers, of course), I think you agree that the latter is

    • a forceful but polite-ish phone call to the number on record, saying "Please stop spamming me and where did you get my name" has worked both times

      It worked? As in, they stopped spamming you and told you from where they got your name? I can perhaps believe the former, but hardly the latter.

      If I ever try to contact an appearant spammer, it's for the purpose of obtaining some information from them, never merely to "opt out" from further abuse. If their response indicates to me that they somehow acted in go

      • It worked? As in, they stopped spamming you and told you from where they got your name? I can perhaps believe the former, but hardly the latter.

        Good point - I wasn't real clear there. "worked", for value of "I never got more email from them", but didn't work in that they didn't admit to buying a list of emails to send spam to and/or harvesting Usenet posts.

        As to your Saturn V cluestick, might I suggest applying it as a suppository rather than a club? Might get their attention a bit better.
  • that a neighbor of mine is one of these fax spammers one day. He hired me to fix his computer, so I did, but in the process I found out what his scam was. While I was over there, he got a fax back from a guy that was a copy of (I think) Utah's Fax spam laws... Basically, he could've been in an assload of trouble for doing it. I did see him remove the guy from his database.

    aaanyway... you might be able to come up with some threatening letter if your state has any laws on this...
  • The googlebot doesn't see slashdot sigs, as it's not a logged in user.
    • OK, good to know.

      However, since my "homepage URL" is my journal, any indexing of a page on which I have a comment will have the URL for my Journal, which will have this JE, so the job does get done.

      However, I've updated my homepage URL to be this JE, just to help out a bit.

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