It must be human curiosity, but when the latest spam report came out from computer security expert Sophos I headed over to see, ‘what are people falling for now?’
The top spam categories are still medications (Viagra and its cousins account for 40%), and mortgages, but a growing concern is the rise in “pump and dump” schemes. These types of spam promote purchase of a stock with misleading or false information, sometimes ‘enhanced’ with real publication quotes to lend an air of legitimacy. Their aim is to target small companies with limited resources to combat such a campaign, elevate the stock price so that the spammers can cash out and leave investors high and dry and the company facing a PR crisis and worse.
Spammers exist only because there are enough people buying into their fraud. Many spam schemes are now run by the mafia, funding other nefarious activities including drug trafficking and arms dealing.
For the good of us all, isn’t it time to implement a user licence for the inbox?
Month: August 2005
“Kaboose Inc.”:http://www.kaboose.com is one of the world’s leading online media companies focused on kids and families. The Kaboose Network, including award-winning sites like “Funschool.com”:http://www.funschool.com, “Zeeks.com”:http://www.zeeks.com and “Kidsdomain.com”:http://www.kidsdomain.com, is a top 10 global Internet destination for over 6.5 million kids and families a month looking for entertaining, interactive and educational content. Jonathan has over 8 years Internet industry experience and an MBA from the University of Western Ontario.
*One Degree: Kaboose is geared to kids but makes aggressive use of advertising throughout most (all?) of its sites. Is there a right way to market to kids online without raising the ire of either parents or the government?*
Kaboose is a free site for kids and parents and is thus supported by advertising. Kaboose is the intermediary between millions of kids and parents and some of the largest brands in the world. We have many parents who bring their kids to Kaboose and they observe their kids interacting with our site, and thus are very aware of the advertising on it. So, the first thing an advertiser and publisher needs to constantly be aware of is that in the online world, where there are kids there are parents. Our most important role as a provider of ad supported content is to be a responsible publisher. That means accepting only ads that are suitable for a child of any age, approving the creative and messaging of every ad that goes up on the site.
*One Degree: You’ve got some pretty in-your-face interstitial ads on the site. The Pillsbury Doughboy just drew a “StrudelDoodle” all over my monitor! I’ve heard reports of technical horror stories with poorly coded ads on some Canadian sites. How do you guard against technical faux pas damaging your brand and your advertisers’ campaigns?*
I’m a big fan of the Application Service Provider (ASP) model for obtaining access to powerful software for use in businesses large and small. In case you’re not familiar with the term, Application Service Providers are third-party organizations that ‘rent’ online access to software to clients that they manage and host on their behalf.
Examples of solutions relevant to Internet marketers that I’ve used (among others) include www.campaigner.com (for email marketing), www.salesforce.com (for CRM), and www.parachat.com (for chat).
There’s a ‘hosted software’ solution for just about anything you might want to do these days. But how do you ensure you are choosing the right one?