Sun 4 May 2008
Last week just before the P2BK forum, I was surprised to receive 3 email spams. One for P2BK, and two others for elections. I am usually very careful where I put my email, so my best guess is one of the online sites in Kuwait I deal with is selling my email.
Today, I got this rudely and clearly email spam from 6alabt.com:
Clearly as the title says, United Networks ad coming from 6alabt.com. I usually wait to resolve the matter with the company, but this is outrageous and cannot be explained. Funny thing is I was standing at their booth last week discussing their business. They’re doing pretty good, making thousands of KD per month. But it seems nothing is good enough for them so they chose to make money out of our emails. My simple reply to them was “Why are you sending us spam email please?”
Well thanks a lot 6alabt. Now I’m neither ordering from you nor coming near United Networks. I think we should gather to build a list of Kuwait spammers to protect users from them.
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May 4th, 2008 at 9:10 am
6ayyeb mo 3ady?! I mean, that’s the best way they can market their campaign and although it’s annoying bas not that much :p
May 4th, 2008 at 9:19 am
chikapappi: Not at all. For not being a spam there are two rules:
1- The user must opt-in to receive those ads
2- The user must have the option to opt out
Neither of the two exist in that case. I just gave them my email to make the orders. It makes no sense for them to use it for spamming me with unrelated ads. Imagine if every site you use will send you email spam? Every blogger taking those emails and spamming them.
Spamming in developed country is a serious crime. And it should be.
May 4th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Selling emails without the consent of the user is outrageous and bad for business. I do agree with you, and United Networks is the worst with zero ethics..
May 4th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Marzouq: I haven’t dealt with United Networks in person, heard enough bad things about them. But this is mainly 6alabat mistake here. They technically didn’t sell our emails, but used them as a service for others!
May 4th, 2008 at 11:10 am
I received spam from P2BK too .. they wanted me to post about their event. It was addressed to a different blogger and the first paragraph had nothing to do with me (’congratulating you on this nice and actively updated blogspot of yours’).
If you want me to write a post about your event .. at least get my name right.
May 4th, 2008 at 11:17 am
K.TheKuwaiti:
Hmm, it seems they have list of famous bloggers and sending them mass emails. Got yours wrong.
It’s just starting now in Kuwait. A friend of mine received an email sometime back for KFH ad, below was details for sending such ads. Calling the number for details the guy said YES, I have 300,000 valid email accounts in Kuwait, and he charges few hundreds for just sending your ad to them!
Strange thing is, those people dont think they want to win the hears of people they are spamming?
May 4th, 2008 at 11:45 am
You know there’s a bright side to spam *Blinking*
Plus this was a shared ad between 6alabat and united networks. right, ya3ni its for 6alabat shared e3lan its not exaclty considered spam. ;p-
May 4th, 2008 at 11:57 am
skinnybumblebee: No not really. It was an image of pizza coming from oven, but thats as close as it gets to 6alabt. I looked at it, no 6alabt.com related thing. All names and numbers relate to United Networks. So it is spam. Also, there is no opt-out option. Maybe I dont want to receive ads, just make orders.
May 4th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Bashar,
I received the same email (which ended up in my spam folder :D).
But I checked the sender, it says 6alabat.net, whereas the ordering site is 6alabat.com. The former is a parked site, so the two might not be related?
May 4th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
I simply replied with FUCK YOU hehehe
6alabat.com sucks major ass
May 4th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Haider: well, you’re right here. But a whois on both reveals they are the same owner, Khalid Al-Otaibi:
whois 6alabat.com
whois 6alabat.net
So the words hold.
May 5th, 2008 at 9:36 am
there are spammers with webcrawling programs that search for email addresses… I also think some companies will buy email addresses from professional “harvesters”!
It sucks!
May 5th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Ansam: Yeah I know. Luckily, I do not publish my email in plain text usually. 6alabt is not selling the email, but selling the service of spamming those emails.