I see many of you out there as two faced. You say you are for freedom of speech so you find it OK to bad mouth the president of the US, yet those same people that are so ready to throw down for their right will give it up in the form of emailing in a heartbeat. I say that emailing is as much a right to voice our opinion as it is to go out in central park and tell the world our views on life. Yet Steve Linford the man who started SPAMHAUS felt/feels like he should be able to dictate how people receive their media…all because at the time he begain SPAMHAUS, he claimed that he was doing so to help his clients that were being inundated with Spam, yet from everything i have read he was running his company into bankruptcy and was looking for a way to keep afloat.
So that brings me to my reason for even bringing this topic up. Earlier last week, one of the sites that claimed to promote black hat techniques aka shady tactics in online advertising was shutdown. Were there people doing and promoting tactics that i didn’t agree with….YES…but who am i or the government for that matter feel that they have the right to censor something like a site that speaks about ways to get through a Spam filter. I heard one person on CNN call these people terrorists. I found that to be humorous considering i was a member of that forum and i would go on there not to find out about ways to trick people into giving me their email or the best way to get through the Spam filter, BUT to find out many new ways to advertise or even make money. For example, i wanted to know more about drop shipping, so i went on there and found a list of drop shippers and wholesalers for all sorts of industries. I saw a few complaints about this info on the sites. Why you ask? it is simple, many people that sell this information to make money off others didn’t like the fact that someone would give this info away when these guys are selling the same info for $5k, which i see as a crime in itself. Sure i can see if a person owned the list and then you found someone distributing it, but the person on BHW sourced this list themselves. T Hat is just one example of something i went on there for.
Another thing i went on there for was to figure out how SMS or text message marketing works. Another reason that they site was probably shut down…they were telling the truth and letting all the facts out to the public about how the cell phone companies are making big bucks on spamming your cell phones with text messages. To run through it real quick, just to get the cell phone companies to look at your company you have to pay them $2k, then you have to pay a company called neustar $500 for every short code that you want. so if you want 55555 and 544444 then you have to pony up another $1k a month. Then the cell companies take 41% of whatever you make off of your premium texts and a another % from a simple text message. they have all these people complaining about receiving these messages, but you wonder why nothing is ever done…because they are making money off you, not only by normal cell phone charges, but from companies like ringtoneusa.com sending you their newest song.
so lets get to it…bhw wasn’t shutdown because it was bad necessarily, but because it was letting out too much info about things that either made the government or some special interest group money, which in turn was giving them bad press or had them losing money. This is nothing more than dollars and cents. SPAMHAUS probably get X amount of dollars from some group for helping shut bhw.com down.
Last thing i will say and this goes to all you folks that sign up for things online and then ten minutes later complain that you are receiving Spam. You folks are the reason that there are so many complaints and why spamhaus has the power they do. Take a minute and read the big letters that are on my sites that say, “by clicking here you are allowing us to message you” You click that, then we send an email, “hey if you don’t want to be part of our list, here is your chance to opt out” you don’t opt out. so i send you an email the next day…and you in turn tell the ISP that i am a spammer, but when you were signing up for a chance to receive walmarts $1000 gift card, you were OK with everything that wee asked of you.
Get a clue people, if you fill out a form online to “win” something, chances are you are going to receive emails about other products and services.