PC Pilot Back Issue Giveaway: Spammed

[Guest]

Back on February 19th, I entered the PCPilot back issue giveaway on this page:http://205.252.249.62/forms/pcpilot/contact.htmlI explicitly selected "Do Not Add Me to a mailing list." Yet today when I check my e-mail I find this in my inbox, sent to the address I created just for entering that giveaway:Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 12:57:41 -00From: "Just Flight Giveaway" To: Subject: The all-new mission pack for IL-2 Sturmovik"Can you hear the rumble of Eastern Thunder?"Go glory hunting - fly 28 exciting and challenging new missions in IL-2 Sturmovik for only

[jagabom 21]

I got the same one but didn't know I was being spammed.JimCYWG

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

Adam, I can't answer your question at the moment, but I am certainly going to look into it. I will get back to you directly.

[Guest]

Thank you, Tom.

[Guest]

Tom,Ok, I will. But I know for a fact that the only way they could have gotten my e-mail address is through that promotion. I used Sneakemail.com to make an address for the sole purpose of entering the giveaway. I have not given it out anywhere but on that form. I also have never bought anything from them, or corresponded with them.Another point I'd like to make is, before anyone adds an e-mail address to a mailing list, they should always confirm that the owner of the address wishes to be added. This can be handled by a simple confirmation e-mail, which can quite easily be automated by server-side scripts--I've done it myself using PHP and MySQL. If they don't confirm it, anyone could submit someone else's address, and then the real owner of that address would get spammed.Well, thanks for your help.Adam

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

"We operate under the UK and European legislation and you can be totally assured that we would never knowingly add someone to a mailing list who had requested not to be. It does nothing for us to create ill will in any case.This is just one user right? It is quite possible that he has bought a Just Flight product in the past. I am sure I have heard his name before, that might just be pure coincidence. To be honest I doubt very much that the data from that promotion has actually been entered into a mailing database. So I think perhaps he is jumping to conclusions.If you pass me or Adam email's address then I will ensure that he is removed forthwith. Anyway apologies if there has been any error on our part. Is (his) the only complaint?As a point of interest for your readers who don't wish to be told about new releases - one simple click on any of our newsletters will remove them, permanently. More than can be said for 99.99% of real luncheon meat (that's what we call spam in Britain) emails!We operate under the UK and European legislation and you can be totally assured that we would never knowingly add someone to a mailing list who had requested not to be. It does nothing for us to create ill will in any case."END QUOTEAdam, please click on the appropriate spot on the message you recieved and as Mungo points out, you will be removed from any future mailings from PCPilot.

[Guest]

Hello Tom and Adam,This issue prompted to ask my IT chaps to find out how this happened. This is the reply I received just now.I hope that it shows that we do care absolutely. I am not sure why this happened or whether it was from our data or the data we got from Avsim. My personal apologies for any trouble caused to Adam.As always customer feedback helps us improve our systems. And Adam being a technical whizz I hope this is some consolation to know another bug has been squashed out there!"I have investigated this one thoroughly and found the cause. The customer concerned has imported, as previously stated, correctly as not wishing to receive email from us. However, for some reason, the record is showing a lower-case "n" instead of an uppercase one in the data-field which controls this. I do not know at the moment how this happened, and am going back through the imports which created the record from the spreadsheet. After investigating the mySQL server documentation in great detail, I have found that it is actually case sensitive - which explains why I have found this email address in the logs for the offending e-shot. I have also altered the export coding to look for both lowercase and uppercase entries for future mailings/eshots. I have corrected the customer's record to stop future e-shots, and currently am working through to ensure that all the other imports are correct - which so far they do seem to be. As a further precaution, the export logs for the e-shot tomorrow will be checked manually to ensure that this customer does not appear in them"Kind regards,Mungo Amyatt-LeirManaging DirectorJust Flight Ltd.

[Guest]

I got an email from JustFlight as well, also checked off "no" because hate getting spam. The only place I've used the email address was for that promotion. Steve

[Guest]

Hi Adam,I have asked my chaps on the server and database to look into how on earth your name got mailed to. As I said we don't do spam as it is completely pointless for all concerned. Something obviously has gone awry and we will look into that. On the bright side at least we listen to what people say and don't just send mail out to millions of people for the sake of it.If anyone has received anything they think they shouldn't through this promotion then they can email me directly at mungo@justflight.comAnd if Adam can use his obvious talents to tell me how to stop me receiving untold advertising through the post then that would be worth a pint of warm English beer at least! The odd email I find easy enough to press a button and delete, but the post really gets up my nose as it is so environmentally unfriendly! Just my own personal bugbear :-)Best wishes,MungoMungo Amyatt-Leir

[Guest]

Hi Mungo,Thanks very much for your kind reply. It caused me no trouble, I was just curious about it. I'm glad to hear that it had a happy ending, with you folks squashing another bug. I've had very similar adventures with MySQL and case-sensitivity confusion. Thanks again,Adam

[Francois_Dumas 10]

Thanks Mungo, your investigation into this and the publication of the results is highly appreciated. Glad the matter got solved this way :-) :-outta Francois :-wave________________________Francois A. "Navman" DumasAssociate Editor &Forums AdministratorAVSIM Online!email: fdumas@avsim.com________________________