Need someone to lead product management at your software company? I create software for people that create software and I'm looking for my next opportunity. Check out my resume and get in touch.

Fun With Spammers

Freshness Warning
This blog post is over 22 years old. It's possible that the information you read below isn't current and the links no longer work.

Michael Fraase wrote about his experience with spammers, using one spammer as a representative example. Michael lets spammers know that if they continue to send hime email he will bill them for the time he spends reading them and the server resources they consume. He sends the bills, gets a small claims judgement for non-payment of the bills and then turns them over to collections. It’s a clever way of annoying a spammer. All of the sudden they start getting calls from a collection agency, their credit report is affected, and it really doesn’t cost him much at all.

This time, though, the spammer fought back. He hired a lawyer to send a cease and desist letter to Michael. You see, in Michale’s original story, he posted a copy of the invoice he sent this particular spammer, including the scumbag’s address, phone number, and email address. The lawyers want that removed. Michael, of course isn’t put off by a toothless letter and posted the lawyer’s letter (including their address) and his response on his site.

I’m not surprised that these people want their addresses removed from the site. People have been known to pull nasty pranks on scumbags lke this, including things like subscribing to a few thousand magazines in their name, all with "Bill Me Later" cheched on the subscription card.

Once you are done reading the followup article, read the responses to it at the bottom. I especially like Nick Simicich’s idea.

Recently Written

Too Big To Fail (Apr 9)
When a company piles resources on a new product idea, it doesn't have room to fail. That keeps it from succeeding.
Go small (Apr 4)
The strengths of a large organization are the opposite of what makes innovation work. Starting something new requires that you start with a small team.
Start with a Belief (Apr 1)
You can't use data to build products unless you start with a hypothesis.
Mastery doesn’t come from perfect planning (Dec 21)
In a ceramics class, one group focused on a single perfect dish, while another made many with no quality focus. The result? A lesson in the value of practice over perfection.
The Dark Side of Input Metrics (Nov 27)
Using input metrics in the wrong way can cause unexpected behaviors, stifled creativity, and micromanagement.
Reframe How You Think About Users of your Internal Platform (Nov 13)
Changing from "Customers" to "Partners" will give you a better perspective on internal product development.
Measuring Feature success (Oct 17)
You're building features to solve problems. If you don't know what success looks like, how did you decide on that feature at all?
How I use OKRs (Oct 13)
A description of how I use OKRs to guide a team, written so I can send to future teams.

Older...

What I'm Reading

Contact

Adam Kalsey

+1 916 600 2497

Resume

Public Key

© 1999-2024 Adam Kalsey.