because we like irony (warning: profanity)



spammers have always ranked low on everyone's list as people to like, perhaps an ångstrom above drug dealers. we have always despised anyone stooping so low as to send out spam, because to us they the represent filthiest, most parasitic wash-outs the internet has to live with. they try to make a fast buck out of hijacking computers, and then using these to peddle child porn, or other equally undesirable 'products'. they see nothing wrong in using other people's resources (computers, network, time) to fill your inbox with vile, unwanted trash. and from our perspective, that just about sums up their good side.

the flip side is that they also willingly create serious problems for internet-based companies. in order to fool some spam filters, spammers spoof their mail's sender using legit senders. Every once in a while, a spammer uses our 'imovieplugins.com' domain as a return adress. the result is an email that looks as if it was sent from us, but in reality was sent from a zombie PC. the only way to find this is to match the originator's email address with the IP trail of the mail, which may also contain spoofed elements. read: not simple.

so, the spammers send out a few million emails, advertising their newest penny stock scam or penis enlargement patches. the results are always the same:
1) everyone is annoyed
2) a few idiots purchase something from the spammer
3) the spammer makes a few bucks, encouraging them to do it again
4) we end up with a huge problem.

and these are the problems: first of course there are those dim-witted net admins that blindly block the spoofed originator, not the IP of the zombie PC. the effect is that after a few hours no-one who uses Comcast or Roadrunner as hosting provider will be able to receive our emails any more. it appears that these providers still choose cheap labor for their mission-critical net admin posts. so, for a large portion of the web, imovieplugins goes off the air.

the next problem is that since we can't reach customers any more their registration keys don't get through. they send us increasingly angry notes, which we can't respond to without being informed by their provider that this reply, too, was 'rejected for spam'. we now have instituted a separate (and costly) process just to deal with that problem.

another problem are the roughly hundred thousand spam bounces that are returned to us. every few million email addresses are bound to have a few percent of outdated email addresses, and all these are returned -- not to the spammer, but to us. and we have to go through every one of them manually to find the few real bounces. needless to say, this takes a lot of time.

but the worst part are the enraged emails directed at us. now, these people understandably are angry about the spam. they tell us what they think in no uncertain terms. some even threaten legal action. others might try to get us to 'change our ways'. in all cases, this is bad publicity. so we try to do what's right, and answer. we try to explain what has happened, and apologize. sometimes, this gets a positive reaction. mostly, though, we fear that our reply ends up in the spam folder, because right after the flame was sent, the sender blacklisted us. all being told, this also takes an enormous amount of time out of our small budget.

the situation has become so bad in the past months, that every time a wave of 'imovieplugin' spam hits the web, we lose about two week's worth of profit dealing with the fallout. fallout that some greedy little shit has created because they want to sell their worthless junk - and laugh about the fact that some sucker whose domain they abuse will pick up the tab.

as i write this, another wave of spam that allegedly has originated from us hits the net. the past two days saw no development on anything related to plug-ins or our other products. but some low-life probably has sold a few cheaply-made pain killers to a hapless addict.

so, if you have ever received spam from imovieplugins.com, please allow us to apologize. we did not send it. we don't send out advertisments. we don't send out product mailings. we don't even send out update notifications (as many have requested). the only way you ever hear from us if when you purchased something, or emailed us a direct question. but should you receive spam that looks as if it came from us, please don't report it as spam. just delete it. otherwise, an intellectually challenged net admin might be tempted to block our domain again.

here's to hoping that eventually, all spammers die. if possible a slow, horribly painful death caused by cheaply made medication.

because we like irony.

Posted: Thu - July 19, 2007 at 09:23 PM      

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