AT&T Resorts to SPAM

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 19:27:06 -0700 (PDT)
To: dave () farber net
Cc: lauren () pfir org
Subject: AT&T Resorts to SPAM

Dave,

It appears that AT&T has now begun a spamming campaign for their local
service offering.  Customers of other AT&T services (and quite possibly
non-customers as well, it's hard to tell for sure) are getting promotional
e-mailings via Bluestreak, apparently one of the Direct Marketing
Associations' happy marketing members.  The messages include
references to domains such as http://www.prq0.com, and are arriving
from domains like http://processrequest.com, both of which redirect
to http://www.bluestreak.com.

These mailings, which address the recipient as a current AT&T long distance
customer, are reaching persons who have *not* provided AT&T with their
e-mail addresses.  If we assume that these are not random, scattershot
mailings, it appears probable that some sort of data matching service may
have been used to obtain these addresses for long distance customers who
chose not to give AT&T their e-mail information in the first place.

Of course, it's never a good policy to trust opt-out URLs in spam, but
included within the messages is a long URL specified for future opt-outs.
However, it is too long to paste properly (even in segments) into some newer
Netscape browsers, at least from various text-based e-mail applications.
Even with a compatible browser, attempts to access the opt-out URL yielded
an
unexplained error message from the server in my tests.

The customer service telephone number provided for more information will not
allow you to reach a person unless you provide a "phone number of interest"
and would not function at all for persons not using touch-tone phones.

No doubt AT&T would claim that their "prior business relationship" with
customers would prevent such unsolicited e-mail communications from being
categorized as spam, regardless of how they managed to get hold of the
e-mail
addresses in question.

But if it looks like a spam and acts like a spam, it's still spam.

Shame on you, AT&T.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren () pfir org or lauren () vortex com or lauren () privacyforum org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
Co-Founder, PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, Fact Squad - http://www.factsquad.org
Co-Founder, URIICA - Union for Representative International Internet
                     Cooperation and Analysis - http://www.uriica.org
Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy


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