Use Other’s Private Information to Get Rich

At the BookWise convention last fall, Sam gave our business card to another associate. Periodically he emails us with offers.

Fine.

Yesterday, however, I got this email (edited to remove real, proper names):

My name is Mibbly Mamboo and I have either sent or received an email from you in the past or I know you personally. Your contact information is in my yahoo address book so I thought you wouldn’t mind if I sent you this note to invite you to join EasyCowPies.com with me.

EasyCowPies.com is a social networking community…if you DO NOT want to receive invitations from EasyCowPies.com members that know you then please unsubscribe here.

Yea! So he subscribed us to a networking site without our knowledge or consent. Thanks a bunch.

I unsubscribed. Really, my life is pretty laid-back and I don’t have much to do besides take care of my six kids, run a home business, take care of my home, do volunteer work, code websites, and speak at conventions. So it was nice to have something important to do today.

Then wrote to him, asking him not to use my email for such things.

No response.

This morning, I got a new email from Mr. Mamboo. It is an eBay ad, trying to sell me an iPhone. And here’s the really neat part. He sent it to 35 different people and he put all our email addresses in the To: field, so they’re accessible (and harvestable) by all.

After that I sent him an email asking him to remove our email address from his list—and from every other list or site he’s put it on. I’ve already been the giddy recipient of offers from some of the other people he spammed.

Just another case where I think the Golden Rule applies.