Note: On 10/27/2005, I received an apology e-mail from the person who left the comment that originally prompted this post. I’ve accepted his apology, and have removed his name and contact information from this post. Mistakes happen, but Opinion Outpost does appear to be on the level.
[redacted] —
Today I received the following comment on my weblog. The comment was posted to an old entry (a technique often used to “hide” information, as it is less likely to be noticed by site owners), had nothing to do with the subject of the entry, and was nothing more than an unsolicited advertisement — in short, it was spam.
On Jun 28, 2005, at 11:56 AM, [redacted] [at] opinionoutpost [dot] com wrote:
IP Address: [redacted]
Name: [redacted]
Email Address: [redacted] [at] opinionoutpost [dot] com
URL: http://www [dot] opinionoutpost [dot] comComment:
We are offering you a simple way to generate revenue from people visiting your website. Join our affiliate program and promote www [dot] opinionoutpost [dot] com on your website and we will pay you $1.00 for each new person you link from your web site, who registers and confirms their registration. Payments will be sent monthly.
We are Opinion Outpost, an online market research panel. We offer our members a chance to voice their opinions through online surveys about many Fortune 500 companies’ products and services. For each survey our members complete we pay them a monetary incentive. We don’t sell anything and joining Opinion Outpost is free. We invite you to take a look at our web site www [dot] opinionoutpost [dot] com to learn more about us. You may also take the opportunity to register yourself.
To join our affiliate program please call me at (801) 379-4064 or reply to this e-mail address and please include your contact information. We will be in touch shortly.
Thank you for your time!
[redacted]
Opinion Outpost
e-mail: [redacted] [at] opinionoutpost [dot] com
Direct: [redacted]
Main: [redacted]
www [dot] opinionoutpost [dot] com
This type of unsolicited advertising is intrusive, annoying, and abusive. If you actually had any interest in convincing me to join your program, you would have e-mailed me directly instead of employing a technique generally recognized as an attempt to get your company’s information into search engines. I still wouldn’t have joined, but I would have been less annoyed.
Not only do I have no interest in your company or its services, but I am posting a copy of this e-mail on my weblog so that my readers will be aware of the underhanded techniques you are using to promote your business.
Sincerely,
Michael Hanscom