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Tag: spam

VistaPrint: Spammers

I’ve just received a spam email from VistaPrint (I have been a customer of theirs before, but not under the email address they targeted, and will now never use them again) and, taking a leaf out of RevK’s book, I’m sending them a notification of breach of the The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 and giving them 14 days to make payment as below. I’ll let you know how it goes:

NOTICE BEFORE ACTION!
You have transmitted an unsolicited communication for the purpose of direct marketing by means of electronic mail to an individual subscriber contrary to section 22 of The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.
Under Nominet regulations (section 9.2) for .me.uk domain names (you emailed xxxxx@xxxx.me.uk), “registrants of .me.uk domain names must be, and remain at all times, natural persons” – and as the paying individual for the domain name registration and the email service theron, I am the individual subscriber as per the above regulations.
This is not a Data Protection Act issue, or an issue with your “unsubscribe” link – the regulations have been breached by sending an email without having had a sale or negotiations with me and without my consent to the email being sent.

You now owe me damages as per section 30 of those regulations. If you promptly pay £15 in damages I will not pursue you for damages as per the regulations or report your breach to the ICO so that they can consider fining you.

I look forward to payment of £15 within 14 days or I will issue a county court claim against you without further notice.

Send payment to:
Sort code: xx-xx-xx
Account: xxxxxxxxx
Reference: 20130807-VISTAPRINT
In light of pre-action conduct directions under the civil procedure rules for action in the county court small claims track, and in consideration of the sums involved I invite “discussion and negotiation” as a means of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), via email. If I receive no reply within 14 days, or if this discussion and negotiation does not resolve the matter, I will proceed with a county court claim without further notice.

I may report this matter to the criminal enforcement authority for such breaches. They may take action and involve the CPS as well as issuing fines. If you choose to resolve this matter promptly with a payment I will refrain from doing so in this case.

I look forward to your prompt reply.

Yours,
Richard Bairwell

Return-path:
Envelope-to: xxxxx@xxxx.me.uk
Delivery-date: Wed, 07 Aug 2013 11:56:31 +0000
Received: from nextmailing.biz ([89.44.179.101]:57391)
by xxxxx.xxxx.xxxx with esmtp (Exim 4.80.1)
(envelope-from )
id 1V72Lv-000168-9w
for xxxxx@xxxx.me.uk; Wed, 07 Aug 2013 11:56:31 +0000
DomainKey-Signature: [snipped in blog post]
Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 11:56:30 +0000
To: xxxxx@xxxx.me.uk
From: Proffesional Printing
Subject: You individual business cards + delivery included
Message-ID:
Content-Language: en
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary=”b1_b413bc1dca758330778e2edbd9e9ace4″

If you have trouble reading this email, click here for a web-based version

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Please note that we cannot monitor any emails sent in reply to this message.
If you’d like to get in touch, please visit our website.
This e-mail has been sent to xxxxx@xxxx.me.uk, respecting the legal rights regarding e-mail marketing and data protection laws in Europe. If you consider that this e-mail has been sent to you by mistake, please let us know as soon as possible.
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Blog: Trackback Spam

Neil and myself have just been hit by some nasty track back spam promoting some illegal adult websites from the IP addresses 200.141.76.227 and 198.26.123.36.

I haven’t found much mention of the 198. IP address on the internet, but the 200.141.76.227 is an open proxy server: therefore, I’ve taken the (reluctant) decision to block all open/anonymiser proxy servers from accessing this blog site (details taken from StayInvisible).

If you want to do the same – a suitable list for sticking into Apache’s .htaccess file is available here: but it may block off ‘good users’ as well as spammers (as with any anti-spam system), but at the moment, I’m willing to take the risk (I hate having to go through the MySQL database by hand, deleting the spam and then rebuilding the blog).

(added: Les of StupidEvilBastard was hit as well by the same spammer)