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Thread ID: 11139	2001-09-03 01:22:00	spam	Guest (0)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
18058	2001-09-03 01:22:00	I just received a spam from an outfit called fotoasia at an email address I use almost exclusively for posts here in PCWorld F1. Is it possible that IDG are selling email address lists of contributors? Hope not.	Guest (0)
18059	2001-09-03 03:14:00	IDG's privacy policy says they won't sell your email address -- and I believe them. It's far more likely that your email address has been picked up elsewhere -- or trawled directly from these (or other) web-pages by the robots that spammers sometimes use. It was because of this kind of thing that I got myself a Yahoomail address that I use for all public postings and hardly ever read. Also, on my websites I use a contact form rather than publish an email address and this has dramatically cut back on the levels of spam I receive. Bruce Simpson http://aarvark.co.nz	Guest (0)
18060	2001-09-03 06:09:00	Greg - I can absolutely assure you that the email address you use to post here in PressF1 is n_o_t used by us for anything other than notifying you of responses to your postings. Furthermore, your email address is not exposed by the PressF1 system, so it cannot even have been 'spidered' off this site (unless you included it in the text of one of your postings rather than in the field provided for it on the form). We do send out emails (very occasionally) to those people who have signed up for our email newsletters and have specified on their subscription that they are OK with receiving product-related emails sent by us on behalf of vendors. However this is: 1) extremely rare (I think we've only sent 3 altogether) 2) Clearly indicated - the emails are clearly headlined as 'IDG Informer' 3) Subscribers can at any time turn off the option to receive these emails from the subscribe/unsubscribe page for the newsletter they are subscribed to. As Bruce said above in his post, we do take privacy extremely seriouslessly, and I can only suggest that in this case your email must have made its way to a spam list in some other way. I totally sympathise with your frustration with this sort of Spam ... I get large amounts of it myself and it annoys the heck out of me. For that reason, I try never to post my email address in the text of postings like this one - as this makes it fair game to the large numbers of 'harvest programs' that spammers use to suck people's email addresses from web sites. If you'd like to ask any further questions, please respond to this post - as I don't want to post my email address in here for obvious reasons!! ;-) Regards, Mark Evans Business Manager Online IDG Communications Ltd	Guest (0)
18061	2001-09-03 06:09:00	Hi Greg, Bruce is quite right, we don't send unsolicited emails to our site visitors, unless they specifically tick a box to receive additional information, when subscribing to one of our publications or newsletters. You can also check out our Privacy Statement to see our position on this. I also received the same email from this fotoasia crowd, and agree with Bruce Simpson that they're picking the emails up using a spyder designed to do exactly that. It's not in our best interests to annoy our visitors, otherwise we don't have a site, so we try to look after you as much as we can. We also need to ensure as much of our content is free to use, which is why we require money from online advertising, so that we can pay our wonderful development team to bring you great products such as PressF1. The best way to treat spam is to delete it without opening it, or use a Hotmail (or other), address as a decoy. Unfortunately, there will always be cowboys in whatever media you choose to use - hopefully, most of your online experiences are good ones, despite this. Kind Regards Kerry Dodds Online Campaign Director IDGNet New Zealand	Guest (0)
18062	2001-09-03 08:26:00	Thanks for the assurances from Bruce S and IDG. I, and I'm sure other contributors and readers of F1 as well, appreciate the recognition given to this issue.	Guest (0)
18063	2001-09-03 13:14:00	Actually - strangely enough - Kerry tells me that she received a copy of the very same spam message today. Looks like someone is perhaps targeting NZ sites for email addresses? Mark	Guest (0)
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