UPDATE:
On 11 Aug 2008 I reported the following:
| | A couple of weeks ago, I started getting various replies to emails | I had never sent. Apparently someone was sending emails with the | From field set to my name and the email address I list on my web | page -- an address that I only use for receiving email, never | sending. | | It turns out that Contract Employment Weekly (see website at |
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) has been sending an edited version | of my resume to employers while forging my name and email | address in the From field. | | Needless to say, I never signed up with them, much less gave | them permission to send out a copy of my resume with 90% of it | missing while pretending to be me. | | Their disclaimer (
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) says: | | ...Your contact information might be provided to a | recruiter under the following circumstances: 1. You | have a resume online and a staffing firm views the | resume as part of a skills search... | | Which, it seems, means that they think that the fact | that my resume is online means that pretending to be | me, forging my email address, and sending out a | bastardized version without my permission is OK. | ... | The emails look like this:: | | From: "Guy Macon" | Sender: "Resume Agent" | To: [I got copies from three of their advertisers] | Reply-To: | | Greetings, Advertiser! | | You are receiving this resume (Guy Macon) | because your office is a current advertiser in Contract | Employment Weekly magazine or on the ContractJobHunter.com | website. | | Thanks, | | The staff of C.E. Publications | | (Heavily edited .txt attachment containing about 10% | of my resume was attached) ... | [1] Company advertises in Contract Employment Weekly magazine. | | [2] Company gets resumes, supposedly responses to the ad, | but actually scraped off the web by an Employment | Weekly magazine employee and sent with forged email | addresses. | | [3] Company assumes that people are reading the ads and | responding to them. | | So all I have to do to really screw with them for pretending | to be me is... | | [4] Write up a nicely worded, calm and rational statement | exposing the scam and telling them that any resumes from | me are forgeries generated by Employment Weekly magazine, | then to send it to all of those advertisers. | ...which I proceeded to do whenever I got a bounced email or out-of-office autoreply back from one of the forgeries.
This morning (08 Sep 2008) I got a call from Employment Weekly Magazine to discuss my complaint. We had a quite reasonable discussion, and established the following:
[A] They apologized and will not forge my name or email address in any future mailings.
[B] Someone who I never heard of living in another state signed me up -- twice. CEW gave me the name, address, phone number and IP Address used to do the signup. I am currently investigating to see whether this was someone who thought they were doing me a favor or something else.
[C] I advised them about confirmed opt-in practices. I didn't expect them to agree on the spot, but they will take it under advisement. For the record, I have repeated my advice below and attached some URLs referencing the right way to manage a mailing list.
From this I conclude that the folks at Contract Employment Weekly are *not* scammers, but are instead a legitimate outfit that adopted some bad practices out of ignorance.
What CEW should do in the future (detailed in the URLs below) is to send an a single email with a non-forgable token asking for permission before sending anyone email or before sending email on anyone's behalf. If there is no reply indicating express permission, they should take that name off their list.
HOW TO DO EMAIL LISTS THE RIGHT WAY: Mail Abuse Prevention Systems (MAPS): Guidelines for proper mailing list management
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Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE):
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Clueless Mailer's Guidelines for mailing list management:
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Mailing Lists vs. Spam Lists:
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Opt-in vs. Opt Out:
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What is the right way to send bulk e-mail?
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conducting a Permission Pass:
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Confirmed Opt-In is not Dead After All:
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Double Opt-in How-To:
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Permission and email marketing:
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Email Sender and Provider Coalition Best Practices Guide:
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Spam threatens the e-mail channel:
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Spam is the problem, you're the solution:
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MAAWG Sender Best Communications Practices:
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ESPC Best Practices Guide:
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I hope that sometime in the future Contract Employment Weekly will email me confirming that they have adopted the above practices. I will report here when and if they do.