So there is this nifty little service that I discovered today. Hold on for the ride–it’s quite a jolt.
Situation: So you receive some email spam. Let’s say it originates from a website called consumergain.com. You would like to unsubscribe. In fact, there are directions on the bottom of the page telling you exactly how to unsubscribe. So you visit their ‘unsubscribe’ page only to find out you have to be a member of consumergain.com in order to ‘unsusbscribe’. If you read their privacy policy it then states:
ConsumerGain.com may also use personal information for any marketing and survey purpose on behalf of itself and its affiliates and subsidiaries. ConsumerGain.com may disclose personal information to third party agents and independent contractors that help us conduct our marketing and survey efforts. Further, ConsumerGain.com may disclose personal information to other companies in connection with marketing efforts including but not limited to direct marketing, which may have no relationship to ConsumerGain.com.
So in other words… in order to unsubscribe, you must give them more information about yourself to create and ‘account’ which in theory would then allow you to unsubscribe. When in fact they are merely collecting more information which they can use at their disposal.
—
So you do a ‘whois’ to determine the owner of the website and you get this:
Registrant:
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15511 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United StatesRegistered through: GoDaddy.com
Domain Name: CONSUMERGAIN.COM
Created on: 10-May-04
Expires on: 10-May-07
Last Updated on: 11-Apr-05Administrative Contact:
Private, Registration CONSUMERGAIN.COM@domainsbyproxy.com
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15511 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
(480) 624-2599 Fax —
Technical Contact:
Private, Registration CONSUMERGAIN.COM@domainsbyproxy.com
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15511 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
(480) 624-2599 Fax —
Great! now I have a phone number and–wait a minute… DomainsByProxy.com–I suspect that this means that CONSUMERGAIN.COM doesn’t want anyone to know who they really are. After a brief consultation with a representative of Domains By Proxy I am told to read their legal policies located here:
Legal Agreement
Subpoena Policies
and Law Enforcement Agency Policies
This is just great! So now companies can mask themselves to the point where it is nearly impossible to get your name removed from any spam lists.
These are the phrases that make me the most angry:
Legal Complaints: The majority of Domains by Proxy customers act within the letter of the law. However, on occasion our service is used in conjunction with illegal or immoral behavior. If you believe a domain registration we hold violates the law or someone’s legal rights or is engaged in morally objectionable activities, we want to fully investigate the matter and act where we can. If you identify a situation you believe warrants our attention, please contact us via certified or courier mail:
and
Domains by Proxy ‘s Privacy Policy prohibits the release of customer or account information without express permission from the customer, except when required by law, to conform to the edicts of the law, or to comply with legal process properly served on Domains by Proxy or one of its affiliates.
If you seek the identity or account information of a Domains by Proxy customer in connection with a civil legal matter, you must fax, mail, or serve Domains by Proxy with a valid subpoena.
Clearly they understand how the law can protect the shady company as well as the legitimate business. Too bad they’re the shady kind.
Now, I can only imagine the number of complaints this shady company gets in a day. I’d love to work there taking complaint after complaint from some trechincal geek who found their phone number.