Have I over-stepped the line?

[RedCardinal]

Ok, first off I know I can be a bit abrasive from time to time (I'm a nice guy - honest).

I would be interested to hear views on whether I over stepped the mark with this blog post?

Obviously the CorkWeb folk are not too happy but I was very careful to report facts rather than opinion.

Any views would be appreciated.

PS Michele I know you were commenting in a recent thread on spam over on the EI board so maybe you would have a view on this?)

Best rgds and thanks in advance

Richard

 

[mneylon]

First of all they spammed.

Whether they feel that you defamed them or not is not important. They sent unsolicited bulk email - if they'd addressed the email to a real person, as opposed to "Dear Business Owner" (or whatever it was) then they might have been able to argue that the mail was not bulk.

If you could PM or email me more details of the mail I can check mail logs on our end and see if there is any pattern or if they are manually doing this.
If they felt that you had done them an injustice then they should have emailed you - posting that comment as "webmaster" is hardly helpful to their cause

Let me know anyway

 

[mneylon]

DISCLAIMER: (I feel I have to add it )

My opinion is not a legal opinion, however I run a company that processes millions of emails every month and have been actively involved in the anti-spam community for several years as well as being involved in the Irish internet community for the same period of time

</disclaimer> - no opening tag, so this post is not xhtml valid

 

[RedCardinal]

Sent it over to your BK addy.

Would be interested to know if there is a pattern here.

Cheers

Richard

ps you just broke the page

 

[mneylon]

They definitely did a mailing run. I've only checked partial logs on two servers so far and I'm seeing the same mail coming in.
I'd recommend that you report them to their webhosting provider.

 

[RedCardinal]

Thanks Michele

 

[mneylon]

By the way, what exactly is "deformation" and how can it be "delt" with?

 

[RedCardinal]

Hand on heart that's how it was posted

I was gonna put up something to say that I hadn't altered it but thought it might be distastful.

 

[Gavin]

I dont think you over stepped the line as Spam is Spam. Interesting post, great link bait material there

Good luck with this.

 

[RedCardinal]

Just a wee update.

I removed references to the offender. I spoke with the guy a couple of times and I'm sure this was just a very naive action on his part. I felt a little sorry for him to be honest.

He told me that he is going to phone companies from now on rather than email them, so I reckon it's a victory of sorts.

Of course Google might take a while to clear that page out of the cache - it might even go supplemental now as I changed the URL

 

[Redfly]

Not at all Richard. Michele was right. They spammed. Simple as that. If Google did something illegal, do you think the millions of bloggers out there would not post about it?

It is my opinion that they should be made an example of and that you shouldn't have removed the reference because they blatently lied in your comments. If you have egg on your face, wipe it off and apologise.

Another thing that grinds my gears is that they offer "Advanced Anti-Spam filters" with their hosting packages.

I say kudos, you weeded out another one.

 

[louie]

Pity I didn't get a chance to view the blog.
What was all about anyway?

 

[RedCardinal]

Louie

The post is still on my blog and all that's been removed are references to the name of the offender (which is still in this thread).

Quite a funny experience and I think I can safely say they wont be sending spam too soon again in the future