Marketing Mondays: You've Been Spammed

Recently I had an unwelcome visitor: several weeks of unrelenting spam (from one javari.com), sometimes ten spams in one day. When I replied with a “Take me off your mailing list,” the spammer—a “cybereditor” named “DMK”— responded with, uh, a lesson in etiquette:  “Kindly remove me from your mailing list, is the proper way. Your ignorance is deafening.”

Oxymoronically funny (emphasis on moronic). But annoying.

The javari spams kept coming, and each “Take me off your email list” from me was met with escalating insults.  I’ll spare you the details, but the last one was,  “Stop wasting our valuable time, bitch.”
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I stopped emailing them and turned to a higher power (no, not prayer, though I believe I did utter a "Dear God" after the 10th spam of the day). Here’s what I did:

1. I saved the emails. You don’t have a case without them. If you receive more than one offensive email from a spammer, save it. I put mine into a separate folder. If you are not computer literate, print them out, but since they arrive via email, you will resolve the problem more quickly if you are able to forward them via email to the appropriate authorities.

2. I called the Federal Trade Commission at 877-382-4357. I expected to be on the phone for the better part of a day, but after punching a few numbers on my keypad and waiting about a minute, a helpful agent turned up on the other end. Ah, our taxpayer dollars at work. Really at work! The person took down pertinent information about the situation and issued me a confirmation number and an email address. With that number in the subject line of each email, I forwarded the spams to spam@uce.gov.

3. I posted information about my situation on Facebook. Your friends are individual fonts of wisdom, and together they can provide a river of assistance. Franklin, for instance, did a little digging and found that Network Solutions was javari.com’s service provider. I have no idea how he knew this, but it allowed me to contact Network Solutions with my problem.

4. I contacted the service provider,  abuse@networksolutions.com, outlining the problem and including a selection of spams, including the messages in which the spammer had been verbally abusive. An agent from Network Solutions emailed me to request that I forward all the abusive emails.  If you can’t find out who the spammer’s service provider is, contact your own.

Don’t be shy about contacting these authorities. Chances are that if you are having problems, others are, too. Critical mass—of many emails to one individual from one entity, or to many individuals from the same entity—constitutes a pattern of abuse. Abusive language from the spammer ups the ante for swift administration by the authorities.The spammers will be warned. If they persist, they will be shut down.

Oh, what's this? I had been free of the Javari emails for about three weeks when one arrived in my inbox. Bracing for another barrage of insults, I emailed back: "Once again, I have to tell you: Take me off your mailing list. I thought this issue has been resolved . . .Should I receive another spam from you, or an insulting response, I will again contact the FTC. And then I will go to the Attorneys General of New York State and Massachusetts. "

To my surprise, I got a very nice response:  " We have tried to scrub you from all lists. This is still in process. Please be patient."  Somebody got the message--and, not just from me.

6. Contacting the Attorney General of your state is your next step. This office is set up do deal with consumer protection, among other issues.

Over to you: Have you had a problem like this? How did you resolve it?

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