clearing up: Re: something nasty

[Ron Arts <raarts () NETLAND NL>]

Adam Maloney wrote:

> I've attached an e-mail that I received to a few info@ accounts at a
> couple of my domains.  The IP block that this originated from and the URL
> references is in .NL, the whois information for upwatch.com is registered
> in Amsterdam.


Well,

I can tell you what was happening, as I am the sender of this email.
We want to test our network's accessability from remote locations. And
we want to test it 24x7. Putting up dedicated servers on a lot of remote
locations is too expensive for us, so I came up with the idea of using
shell accounts, where I could run daemons or cron programs.
I found these hard to find, so I decided too write to a lot of providers.

(As I see it, this can not qualify as 'spam', because I was writing
to sales departments trying to buy something.)

On the other hand, it could generate a lot of reponses which I did not
want to wade through, so I put up a small webpage for it, attached
to a database.

Note that I specifically *told* the sales to contact a techie *both*
in the email *and* in the webpage.

So, this is all there is about this nasty mail, keep up the good work.

BTW: as with any mass mailing, I did get some useful responses, but alas
     not nearly enough, maybe another request, but differently worded
     will follow in the near future.

Regards,
Ron Arts

PS: Thank you Anders Beckman for making me aware of this incidents list.