Start a home business, get rich quick, win financial freedom! If you watch late-night TV, you've heard it all before. But what's the story behind these slick pitchmen and their dubious schemes? Enter The Salty Droid, your ornery metal guide to the corrupt underworld of scam-marketing scum. This charmingly acerbic bot (owned and operated by mild-mannered Chicago dog-lover Jason Michael Jones [inter-view, long talk + transcript]) is a valiant crusader against the vile con-men who bankrupt the elderly and the desperate with beautiful lies. Exposed so far: A shadowy "Syndicate" of frauduct-pushing personality cults polluting the media with blogspam and woo-woo talking points. Boiler rooms in the Utah desert where telemarketers farm credit from easy targets with cunning, probing scripts [PDF]. Powerful politicians bought wholesale. Believers left to die in fraudulent new-age vision quests. It's a soul-crushing beat, enough to make one feel like a regular catcher-bot in the digital rye. But somebody's got to do it -- preferably someone with plasma nunchucks and titanium skin.
posted by Rhaomi on Aug 31, 2011 - 47 comments

The Wall Street Journal's What They Know blog is charged with determining what information marketers are capable of learning about internet users through tracking technology. This weekend, they took aim at Facebook, after their investigation discovered that many popular apps on the social-networking site, including those by Zynga, have been transmitting identifying information in the form of User ID's to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, even if a user has enabled strict privacy settings. Additional analysis. Response post on Facebook's Developer Blog. Forbes' blogger Kashmir Hill asks if the WSJ is overreacting, and Techcrunch notes that the severity and risks of UID transferral are still being debated.
posted by zarq on Oct 18, 2010 - 56 comments

"I just read about CNN Headline News in us weekly. Those guys at the football game were total jerks." --Thoth
posted by jca on Apr 25, 2005 - 42 comments

Not only is pop star Ashlee Simpson lip syncing and manufactured, but so are some of her fans:
"I just read about Ashlee in us weekly. Those guys at the football game were total jerks." -- mandyc19

Welcome to the world of message forum viral marketing, "street team" advertising, and corporate shills. That "fan" posting in forums about Court TV, The Smoking Gun, or shows on Fox isn't a fan at all -- just another type of spammer -- only this time employed by giant media corporations.
posted by jca on Jan 25, 2005 - 85 comments

SpamKing: Out of the Inbox and Into the Closet? I wan7 my XXXXXXXL sh1rt N0W.
posted by freebird on Apr 20, 2004 - 11 comments

Viral marketing done well: First, identify your market of choice. Second, offer an online petition about an issue that is important to them. Make sure that your privacy policy allows you to send the visitor email. Each target should be encouraged to spread the petition's address amongst their friends, selecting other similar marks better than you ever could. Better still, the suggestion to visit your site will come from a trusted source. Third, take your list and sell access to it. Is it still spam? If you do your job right your mark won’t even know they’ve been hit until the email starts to roll in, and perhaps not even then. There’s nothing to be ashamed about, right?
posted by snarfodox on Apr 12, 2004 - 97 comments

Spammers strike back? Well then call this return of the Webmaster Jedi. As a blogger and domain owner, I am sick of waking up to fifty new comments, all of which are spam for something of dubious legality. The fine folks at Kalsey are angry too. And they declared war. Lots of people stood up and took notice. What can you do to help stop this infestation? Blacklists and Bayesian filtering come to mind... (Via Smart Mobs)
posted by swerdloff on Nov 11, 2003 - 22 comments

Verizon v. Ralsky and Additional Benefits LCC Verizon is suing Alan Ralsky in Federal court for sending enough spam -- more than 56 gigabytes -- to "virtually paralyze" their e-mail servers on at least two occaisions. The trial begins Sept. 23. Ralsky's response: "These (anti-spammers) feel we've infringed on their personal space. They want to own the Internet." Ralsky and his lawyer claim that he is picked on because he is open about what he does, yet Ralsky denied it to Brian Livingston last year. More about Ralsky.

Some good anti-spam information sources and tools include Spam Laws, CAUCE, SpamCop, and Spamcon.
posted by pmurray63 on Aug 4, 2002 - 11 comments

It takes all kinds: Marketing guy claims "I love spam."
posted by pmurray63 on May 16, 2002 - 19 comments

In the 'Automakers that don't get it' file comes this. Saab USA is spamming people to tell them about their new cars. Great, thanks to Saab USA's inept marketing department, I'll never buy a Saab in my entire life.
posted by mathowie on Aug 28, 1999 - 2 comments