Couple of days backed I received two spam email from a new local online shopping site that claims that being an online presence, thus doesn’t have any physical store. Well, that’s quite ok, but if you look at the site, you’d notice that they don’t have any address of an office or where you can find them should anything happen. Well, I ain’t gonna comment on the credibility of such online shops, just don’t get burn.
Anyway, as I looked at the header of the email, i found that the sender most probably used a software on his PC to send his email as the IP number of the source is from ####.gamma##.maxonline.com.sg. Stupidly he left a vital clue to his identity when his userid(radicpunk) was recorded on the email.
Being the curious me, I went to do a google on that userid, and found a few listing of the person and also at those sites, the reference to that online shop. A few more clicks later, you’d find out the person’s name, his fondness for Korean culture and that he most probably took a trip to Korea around the end of last year. And a casual search though the online store’s website, you’d find that he is also the site’s Webmaster & Operations. 1+1 = 2. gotcha.
I hate spam. So when I saw that Maxonline was involved, I went to look at Starhub’s website to look for a contact for spam abuse complains. But no matter where I looked, I couldn’t find anything and had to resort to e-mailing the customer service.
I wrote:
bq. There seems to be no avenue for feedback to Starhub regarding spamming abuse. there should be a prominent place where users can report spamming abuse. I don’t even get any results when I search for spam or abuse. Please inform me where I can email to to report spamming. Thank you.
and the reply I got:
bq. We have received your feedback regarding attempted intrusion by another user. In future, you may wish to contact our Abuse Team directly at abuse@starhub.com for such related cases. We would also appreciate if you can send us a copy of the Firewall log file (either “copy and paste” on email or send as attachment).
The thing that caught my eye was the part about sending them a copy of the Firewall log file. Uh duh? I report about spamming abuse and they ask me for a Firewall log? Shouldn’t Customer service officer be more educated about such issues especially coming after SoBig email virus and stuff. If it was an automated reply with generic statements, then it would be forgivable as it would be more effective to have a general email reply. But the email I got was from someone that signed off as Customer Affairs …
So much for quality services.
PS: I’ve also been using SpamCop, a plugin for Mail.app to help reporting spam to SpamCop. I actually have less spam nowadays.
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