So email spam is obviously a big deal these days. With viagra offers, celebrity nude pics, and Nigerian princes looking for ways to send you millions, our inboxes are filled with what seems like an endless supply of unsolicited garbage. Usually the spam is obvious as it’s generally some automated, poorly written email with very generalized information and from some incredibly bogus person or company. However, sometimes you’ll get these types of emails and they are much better disguised and are from somewhat legitimate companies.

Take for example the following email from Luke at Motive Interactive:

I am contacting you today to find out if you have any available advertising
innovatory on your blog.

Motive Interactive is releasing our next version of our Affiliate Marketing
Network and we
are looking to sponsor your blog with a paid review as well as a 125X125
sponsorship.

Possibly you have some other ideas and I would love to talk with you about
them.

To be clear this is for Motive Interactive to place advertisements on your
blog to promote our company’s new release of our Network.

Thank you for you time,

Luke [last name removed]

Ok, the first thing Luke did wrong was send out a poorly formatted email. Also, mispelling “inventory” with “innovatory” sets the wrong tone right off the bat. Now the trick here is that this email is from a Motive Interactive affiliate manager. I looked up the company and the affiliate manager and they both seem legit (though Luke’s profile and collection of online profiles and websites were laughable at best). The person is also offering to buy advertising space rather than selling something.

At this point let me point out right now that this email came to an email address that I don’t have publically on any of my websites. I use contact forms on my websites to minimize spam such as this.

Anyway, I decided to see what I could find out from the guy so I responded with the following:

Luke,

Which website/blog are you referring to? I don’t currently offer paid reviews, though 125×125 adspace is available on most of my websites.

At this point I was partially trying to feel him out to see how shady he was as well as keeping an open mind about perhaps selling some advertising space. The fact that they do paid reviews on sites already had my marking off some negative points on the morality scale. I run quite a few different websites so I was curious which one he had his eye on.

Luke:
What affiliate marketing related blogs do you have I would be interesting in running on anything relevant.

Me:
How did you get my email if you didn’t come from a specific site of mine?

Luke:
I came across your website through online research and emailed you through your information available online.

It is important to get off on the right foot here and I am more then happy to go into more detail on how I came across your website over the phone [phone number removed] any time.

Me:
You keep saying you came across my website… but you don’t mention which one. I have several. I also do not have any of my information available on any of my websites, especially my email address. So this means you either got my email from another website that sold it to you or perhaps you just ran a program to scrape email addresses of unprotected domains – which I have several domains that don’t have any websites up on them yet, so I don’t have them who-is protected yet. Either way, you obtained my information through less-than-ethical means and I would definitely not want to do any business that started off from you basically obtaining my information and spamming me. It’d also be pretty foolish to hand over my telephone number as well. If it really were important for you to get off on the right foot, you’d obtain your contacts in a more ethical manor. And when you did contact somebody and they ask how you got their information, you could be honest and upfront about it.

Luke:
I understand your thinking here. The research was directed and no scraping of email from the email nor use of scripts was done.

I have been nothing but honest and straight forward with my communication with you.

I do wish you success in your business,

Me:
“The research was directed” can mean anything. If you’d like to be honest and straightforward, please tell me how you got my email address.

Oh and you’re research was definitely NOT directed because you had no idea what websites I run nor did you know that I don’t even have any affiliate marketing focused websites.

Luke:
I appreciate your thoughts and believe in positive communication – I do wish you the best ,

Me:
So I guess you won’t tell me how you got my email address? Doesn’t sound like positive communication to me. I’ll be forwarding our conversation over to motive interactive with my complaints. You definitely don’t represent the company well and have ensured that I won’t ever be using motive interactive and will make sure people I know will stay away from a company that uses unethical tactics in trying to gain membership.

As you can see, Luke repeatedly avoids answering any of my questions. He remains polite, but dodges everything I ask. It’s clear at this point that he merely came across my email address as a lead somewhere and decided to send a generic email to me in the hopes of a response. This, combined with the fact that my email address is nowhere to be found on my websites, means that Luke’s original email was an unsolicited email and thus spam.

Now, with that being said, it probably wasn’t against the law as I don’t believe it breaks any of the rules established by the CAN-SPAM Act. However, that doesn’t mean emailing people through these shady methods isn’t unethical.

Luke actually forwarded the conversation over to Brendan, the CEO of Motive Interactive so that I didn’t have to. Brendan defended his employee’s actions and apologized for “any inconvenience this has caused [me]“. Still wanting to figure out how they got my info, I proceeded to ask Brendan to tell me how they got my email address and why I was targeted.

Brendan:
I did read the email correspondence and noticed right away Luke offered to get on the phone to discuss your concerns, as phone conversations tend to be much clearer and more personal i find his approach far from “shady”. I have meeting with our media buying team today and I will ask them where they found your site, and why it was considered for an opportunity. I will also inform then that there is not a fit for working together and that we have removed your information from any future opportunities.

Me:
I completely understand offering the talk on the phone, but when I clearly told him that wasn’t an option, he continued to be very dodgey and avoided any straightforward responses. The fact of the matter is, I don’t have a single affiliate marketing related website, so your source(s) are obviously quite poor. The whole thing would have been nice and easy if he just came right out and said, “I don’t know where your information came from, but I can find out.”

I mean, how amateur does it look when your personnel contact somebody saying you came across their website and that it seemed like a great fit for whatever you’re selling – then when asked about which website they are referring to, they can’t respond. And then when confronted with asking how they got the information, the person just avoids the question repeatedly. Luke obviously just spammed me using some lead source your company provided. He never came across any of my sites and saying he did so to try and partner with me is fraud. If he did obtain my information ethically and did come across a specific website of mine, he would have just come out and said so – but instead, he dodged every question I asked. I will be posting this information publically to warn others about your company and it’s employees.

Brendan
Again i can’t do more right now than to offer my apologies and make sure you are no longer contacted by Motive, I’m sorry this is not enough for you. We are available to talk about this matter, and can make arrangements to do so, however it seems you are not open to that. I agree with you, our rep could have told you that he would find out, but his lack of information at that time for the particular situation does not mean that he was avoiding the answer, he just did not have the information, his role is not “research, media buying, or sales” and he is not involved enough in that process to give you the answer you were looking for. Our media team searches for sites based on keywords that match either an advertising opportunity in our network or in this case an opportunity for us to directly buy traffic on a site or domain that met this criteria. There is nothing “shady” or “unethical” about this process, it’s only a simple attempt to get some business going. I’m sorry that you are unwilling to discuss this matter with us. I’m also surprised that you would “be posting this information publicly to warn others about your company and it’s employees” based on a hunch, suspicion, and assumption that without merit is slanderous.

I can assure you that we follow guidelines, standards and the law regarding our industry. In fact Motive is involved with the IAB to help set these regulations.

http://www.iab.net/about_the_iab/recent_press_releases/

press_release_archive/press_release/5191

Once again Jeremy, I’m sorry that you feel we contacted you in a manner you deem unsolicited. You have put some effort and time into your numerous emails to us, so for that, I’m sorry for the inconvenience.

A few things to note here. Brendan admits that Luke did not find my site nor did he know anything about me or my business – he was just following a lead that the “media team” picked up. Luke could have easily cooled things off quickly by just admitting this himself. Instead, he specifically said the he was the one that came across my site (though we still don’t have an answer as to which site that is). This would be a lie and a deception that sure sounds like it falls under fraud.

The next thing to notice in Brendan’s responses is how he semi-threatens me by claiming that if I post any of this conversation online that it would be slanderous. Of course, truth is a defense against slander, and I am only pointing out the facts presented in the email conversation.

Like Luke, Brendan remains polite throughout the whole ordeal – which is definitely something to look up to. However, both continued to avoid any and all requests for answers as to how they obtained my information and why they targeted me. If they truly want to run a legitimate business, they should be more open and honest about their tactics.

I will finish this long rant with the last email I sent to Brendan. It sums everything up pretty well and has yet to receive a response.

Me:
I never said I’d post hunches or assumptions, just that I’ll probably be posting our email conversation for the public. Truth is a defense to slander/libel, so please don’t threaten me with that nonsense. I have no desire to just blatantly attack you or your company with lies. You keep saying you are available to talk about the matter, but all I care about are 2 things. How you got my email address and which website you “researched”. I don’t need a meeting arranged or a phone call or anything else.

The facts are as such:

1. Luke emailed an email address that is not publically attached to any website. He claimed to have come across a website of mine but did not name which one it was.

2. When asked which website he was referring to, he dodged the question.

3. I asked where he got my email. He said he emailed me through information that was available online. This may be true, as my email is attached to various accounts on websites, but not on any websites I own and any third party websites should not be selling my informatio because I always opt out of that and make sure they don’t sell the information. So where online did he get this information? Apparently neither he nor you know the answer to this right now because another part of the company found the information. This means that he lied when he said HE found my information online.

4. When pressed further about how my information was obtained, he pressed again the phone call option saying he would give provide full disclosure at that point. So, he is claiming to be able to provide all the information I require, but ONLY if I call? So either he is lying and still doesn’t have the information I requested or he has the information but is witholding it unless I call him on the phone. This doesn’t sound the least bit shady to you?

Now let me say that I do appreciate that both you and Luke have been polite through this whole ordeal. I do believe you will remove me from your leads, which I also appreciate, but as somebody who goes to great lengths to protect my information, I’m frustrated that motive interactive either refuses or is unable to provide me with how they obtained my information. You are the only company to have emailed this email address. My websites contain contact forms for this very reason, to restrict the amount of spam this email address receives. Along with that, I very much dislike the method in which Luke tried to approach me. He is either incompetant, deceitful, or more likely a combination of both. His email reeked of automated spam with generalized text and the fact that Luke himself had zero idea what website’s I operate.

Since you guys apparently don’t know of any websites I run, here’s one: http://www.netmorality.com. Perhaps you’ll even get some free advertising on there in the near future.