OT: Need advice: client wants to spam (ARGH!)

[Ugo Bellavance]

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Craig White wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-11-11 at 12:53 -0600, Jason Balicki wrote:
>> Hey guys,
>>
>> Well, it's finally happened: I contract IT services for a client
>> who I've heard through the grapevine is seriously considering
>> spam as an option.  This company is a sub 20 person small
>> business.
>>
>> First: let me say for the record that if I'm asked to implement
>> this I will refuse and if they pursue this through other
>> means I will sever the contract.
>>
>> That being said, I'd like to talk them out of it, as they're
>> otherwise a good client and I'd like to keep them.  I'd like
>> to think that if they were presented with all the information
>> they'd back off.
>>
>> The problem is that everything I can find is more of the
>> technical "how do I fight spam" kind of document, and not
>> so much "why you shouldn't send spam, you idiot" and I'm
>> looking for documents of the latter type to send to this
>> client.
>>
>> They haven't approached me about this yet, I heard this
>> from a mid-level employee who thought I should know that
>> it may be coming.  I'd like to be armed with a bit more
>> than "it's unethical" (although, really, that should
>> be enough).  I can explain about botnets and viruses,
>> worms and trojans till I'm blue in the face, but all
>> that stuff is sort of esoteric to a non-techie who's
>> just looking for a revenue stream.
>>
>> So, if anyone has any links, advice, or anything else
>> please let me know.
>>
>> If I get a lot of good info, I'll try to aggregate it
>> on the Wiki, too.
> ----
> first of all, doing spam is not a job for amateurs so it's highly
> unlikely they would do it in house.
> 
> second of all, if they were to attempt to do it in house, as someone
> else already pointed out, their mail server would be blacklisted and
> legitimate email won't get delivered.
> 
> thirdly, the leads they generate will be costly and ineffective.
> 
> I have a friend who has a mortgage business and when he told me what he
> was doing I laughed and was glad he didn't try to get me involved. You
> don't have to lecture them, all you need to say is that is an area of
> the computer industry that you don't participate in, in fact, you work
> the other side...set up clients to stop that from occurring. If you
> lecture, you might lose a customer. If you simply point out these issues
> and perhaps any applicable laws, you look smart.

I agree.  If you ever detect that they are sending spam, I'd do the 
innocent and tell them that you discovered and that they should 
investigate if they have zombies or something similar.  You can ask them 
if they are doing that on purpose. If so, you can explain them all the 
consequences.  They'll probably understand.

If they want to test mass-mailing, they could use something like 
http://www.d-courrier.com/ and evaluate the results.

Now the question is whether to act proactively or reactively...


> 
> Craig
> 
> 

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