Dish Network Spammers...

[jgoggan]

Lately, I've been getting numerous spam messages (to various accounts -- mainly those that are listed as a domain registrar, so I'm assuming that is where they grabbed them from) that are advertising Dish Network through MyDishNow.com. Does anyone know if Dish has any rules/regulations regarding how retailers advertise that these spam messages would be breaking? It certainly seems that someone like Dish, with so many retailers, would have very specific rules about what advertising can be done and such.

In any case, I emailed Dish about the spam -- asking them if they can do anything about the retailer in question -- and got a reply that told me that I should just click the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of the email if there is one. Which, in most cases, is one of the worst things you can do. Pretty much any reliable anti-spam source on the Net will tell you to absolutely NOT do that since, for most scum spammers, that just tells them that you read it and your email is valid!

The email continues on and says that they can't really do anything since they aren't Dish owned.

In any case, just curious if such behavior is actually permitted as Dish seems to be indicating it is. Shouldn't they have more control over retailer advertising (both content and mechanism of doing so)?

- John...

[Richard King]

They are in violation of their dealership agreement. I would try to send a message to the legal department at Dish. I don't have an address, but you might try the dishnetwork.com and see if there is a reference there.

[jgoggan]

Ok -- I'll give that a try. Just to note it, I wrote back to Dish and explained that using "unsubscribe" wasn't a good idea -- and that I was surprised that they had no rules regarding how their retailers advertised. They wrote back, thanked me for the unsubscribe info (and said that they would stop doing that at home themselves) and then said:

"As for the guidelines concerning the advertisement of retailers, since they
are independent retailers DISH Network has no control of mass advertisement
via email or mail. Sorry about the inconvenience."

That just makes no sense to me. So, I'll check with legal. Thanks.

- John...

[jgoggan]

Just found this at DishNetwork.com:

"DISH Network does not condone or tolerate the use of Spam e-mail to sell or market our product. If you have a complaint about such a practice from one of our dealers or agents please send the offending e-mail to abuse@dishnetwork.com and we will investigate and deal with them appropriately."

So, glad they seem to care (unlike what Executive Support is telling me). :) I sent an email off to the Abuse address -- we'll see if I hear anything back.

- John...

[Kagato]

There are some dealers that have affiliate programs. Most likely someone who's an affiliate is sending them out. Most of the time if you email the dealer about it they will terminate that affiliates account. I did a couple quick check and the company is hosted in San Fran. You can forward the email to abuse@servepath.com about the spam. Most ISPs highly frown upon spam.

This leads me to one of my main gripes about Dish Network dealers. Most of them have sub par web sites. Don't get me wrong, there are great dealers out there, who give good customer service and prices, but there isn't anyone who has a web site (or affiliate program) as nice as say Orbit Sat (which sells D*).

[Mark Holtz]

Speaking as a ISP tech...

If you are forwarding a message on to abuse, please include the full message headers as well as the message. This gives a path as to where the e-mail originated.

[jgoggan]

Indeed...

Speaking as a guy that enjoys complaining, I am quite familiar with tracing headers and providing proper information... ;)

Thanks though.

- John...

[James Long]

Speaking as a guy that enjoys complaining, I am quite familiar with tracing headers and providing proper information... ;)
I wish more people would.

I own a few domains, one in particular seems to attract spammers who use it as the from address. Then I get complaints to abuse@ about my customers spamming people. I don't have customers ... it's a one man domain and I'm not sending spam for E*, D*, porn, enhancements or siding. The few that bother to send full headers (and the MAILER-DAMIEN bounces that I used to read) show that most of the spam sent using my domain name came from AOL -- throwaway accounts.

AOL should prevent people from making SMTP connections directly from their machine to anyone outside the AOL network. That would probably cut spam in the US in half.

JL

[jgoggan]

Yes, we have similar problems. We own a three-letter .com domain name -- so it seems to commonly get typed when people are faking random from addresses and such -- simply because you hit it easily with one hand. heh.

- John...

[FTA Michael]

I suggest you look into getting a spamcop.net email address. For a modest annual fee, SpamCop will filter your spam and provide you the means to instantly report it. In my experience, it's a deterrent to most spammers because they know a lot of spam sent there will be reported quickly.

Change your ISP email address to something unguessable, then make a friendly name at spamcop.net, then let SpamCop forward it to the unguessable address. Works well for me.

[Mark Holtz]

Both my work and personal e-mail are scanned by Spam Assassin, and since I now access my e-mail through IMAP, I put in a filter on the server side so that anything marked as SPAM will go to a seperate Spam filter, and anything that is has a certain score or above will automatically go into the mailbox of /dev/null .

[James Long]

What is unguessable? In my experience, if anyone has ever used that name before the @ on usenet or forwarded email it will be tried against my well known domain. My lesser known domains don't get that kind of attack so much, but they don't get used on usenet or mail lists.

I just set up an account using hacker spelling (h4ck3r sp311ing ?) and it has received a couple of spams. Once one of the pro spammers that tracks deliverable addresses and reports them back to be added to a database hits that address I expect the floodgates will open.

JL

[jgoggan]

Both my work and personal e-mail are scanned by Spam Assassin, and since I now access my e-mail through IMAP, I put in a filter on the server side so that anything marked as SPAM will go to a seperate Spam filter, and anything that is has a certain score or above will automatically go into the mailbox of /dev/null .

Same thing here -- I have Spam Assassin and MailScanner in use on our server. Still, I get so much, it is hard to get everything without setting a score so high that non-spam gets removed. Still looking for that happy median. :)

- John...

[FTA Michael]

What is unguessable?The most unguessable user names (and passwords) are "random" letters with a number or two thrown in. A great pneumonic is to use the first letter of each word in an easy-to-remember sentence. "I joined DBSTalk in '02" could become IJDBSTI02 or IJDN02 or somesuch.

The next best unguessable name is what AOL does with its signup disks: Join two unrelated English words, sometimes with a number. "Dish3Hedgehog" ought to be safe, for example.

My super secret email address is simply two English words, and my ISP is huge enough to be an inviting target, but I've never received anything directly to that address after over a year. I have a Hotmail account that uses the first technique, and it's received zero spam in its lifetime, which is quite an accomplishment for a Hotmail account.

[rodb]

spamcop.net, report the spam there. Paste in the headers and message and spamcop.net will send reports to the administrator of network where email originates and the administrator of network hosting website referenced in spam.

[jgoggan]

Well, that sometimes tends to not do much except force them to move servers. Don't get me wrong -- it often helps and I recommend it. But, in this case, I think I'm much better off going through Dish to get the affiliate to stop doing it from a Dish retailer standpoint -- as opposed to just getting them to move somewhere else to continue to do it.

- John...

[FTA Michael]

I agree with John. A few years ago, when I kept in touch with the Spamcop newsgroups, they cultivated a contact inside E* to accept their spam reports. I can't remember who it was (and whoever it was might not be there anymore), but if you can find another good one, that's much more effective than just hitting the ISP.

But hitting the ISP is always good too. :)