DIT Email

Ste.phen

Has everyone else started getting spam in their DIT mailboxes addressed to the allstudents-list address?
some of it's pretty sick, including the (real??) picture of the decomposing body sent to the whole college by "Anne Poltergeist" (bitch@cow.com) or something?

Anyone know who's behind it?
(and by extension, where they live, i habe a hankering for some mob justice)...

damnyanks

Best to check the mail headers. Should give the IP address from which it originated.

ballooba

I used the All Students List the other day without thinking about it, it was unprofessional and in retrospect I shouldn't have done it.

The emails I send are genuinely of interest to most students and are read by up to 1,500 people each (from a list of 4,000).

I don't know who sent the bullshít emails but I think there could be slightly sinister motives behind them.

The people I advertise for are Quak Promotions (official promotions company of DITSU KST and AST), DITSU themselves (TradFest etc.), DIT Social and Cultural Committee (Fashion Show etc.), Drama Soc (Drama Week) and a few other groups with a genuine connection to DIT.

If you want to unsubscribe email me at unsubscribe@entslink.com

Any emails from my company carry EntsLink branding with the exception of the M&M Society who were recently allowed to email without carrying our branding as a favour.

Hydromonkey

Yeh, I got all that spam aswell. The decomposing body was pretty disturbing if it was real. Anyway, haven't recieved any more today so i pressume the system admins closed whatever loophole let people do it

briano

Balloba,

What ever about the other emails from alice polterguist or whatever, I am fairly sure that the emails you and the M&M soc send are illegal.

My understanding of it is (and IANAL, just a measly student...) that a business, such as yourself or Quak, can only send unsolicited emails to a personal address if the recipent has purchased goods or services from you in the past, and even then you must include a method for unsubscription from your lists (which you do, very professional by the way). If students have given you their email address, either directly or to a society that employ you to promote their activities, then the emails aren't unsolicited provided that they relate to the society themselves.

Now, I'm not getting on your back about this, but as your business grows (or if Quak grows and you continue to do their email promotion) you might want to check out the legality of using the all student list. Especially seeing as "the war on spam" or whatever they are calling it is quite the popular cause in the EU at the moment and their are some fairly heavy fines for offenders.

And Igy, Count me in on that Mob. I'd seen that picture before but had no real desire to see it again. I'll bring my stick with a nail in it.

Ste.phen

Well the pic was pretty sick, but not mob worthy on its own.
The real annoyance came when someone (this links back to what ballooba said about sinister motives) added the address to about a dozen mailing lists, including one or two pornographic ones, so now that address is spam central.
Well, it was on friday anyways, i think they've started filtering the mail more closely.

I actually cant help but wonder why it took so long for something like this to happen if there weas no restriction on who could send mail to the list...


anyways, enough outta me

ballooba

I know you are not getting on my back about it but:

My mailing list is of genuine interest to students judging by the fact that people open the emails rather than just dumping them into their thrash.

The emails are read by on average 1,200 people from a 4,000 mailing list. That means that people only read stuff that is relevant to them i.e. chicks read the fashion show emails, people that like table quizzes read those emails and alcos read the pissup emails.

There were teething problems with the database at first and sometimes people weren't unsubscribed as quickly as they would like. At the moment anyone who asks to be un-subscribed is done so immediately. For every person who has un-subscribed another person has subscribed. Im happy with the subscription level at the moment. If the SU had the competence I would gladly hand over the company to them tomorrow.

On another Issue:
Over the past year I have done my level best to encourage Societies to run good events and have given them free advertising. It is a fairly crap situation when we have to pay people like Quak to run events for us. Us being a group of 20,000 students who can't find a few people in our number to get their acts together to organise a few decent events.

We are not socially retarded, we don't need a company to tell us how to have a good time.

briano

Unfortunately it doesn't matter how useful the students find the emails. If you send emails to people who have not bought a product or service from you or subscribed to your mailing list, then it appears to be illegal.

Bear in mind that IANAL, but my understanding of the issue is this: You can send emails to your 4,000 Subscribers (of which I am one) provided that you informed them, at time of subscription, what you intend to send them. In this case information related to the activity of the students union & societies in DIT.

However, if a company from outside DIT comes to you with a propsition that you think is suitable (at the bottom of the page) , but is unrelated to the DIT SU & SOCs then it is illegal for you to market it, using your current database.

An example of this would be if a pub asked you to promote a Student night that was being run independently of DITSU you could not agree to use your mailing list as you had not informed the subscribers of your intention to promote a pub when they subscribed.

As for the all-students list, I am pretty sure (and again, IANAL) that it is illegal for you, or the M&M soc, or any other business to use it.

Firstly, I am pretty sure that the all students email address 'belongs' to the DIT, not to DITSU, and I think there was a case (opinion of the case here from the register) about an ex-employee who used a similar list in the states and was arrested for trespass. I believe the ruling was overturned after the accused had spent two years in jail.

Secondly, Using the all students email address falls foul of the Irish and EU laws on spam, as it is unsolicited email.

Regarding the "On another Issue" part of your post, you are dead right. IMO ents in DIT has been woeful for the four years that I have attended here. Especially RAG week losing horrible amounts of money over the years. Good on you for trying to sort it out.

(God, its amazing what people will do to avoid writing their thesis...)

ClareBear

Yeah same here. Very annoying.

ballooba

Originally posted by briano
Unfortunately it doesn't matter how useful the students find the emails. If you send emails to people who have not bought a product or service from you or subscribed to your mailing list, then it appears to be illegal.

You might not have read the first post I made but I know I shouldn't have used all students list.

I was actually chancing my arm to see if it would work, hadn't really thought about it.

Won't be using it again. Evenif I wanted to, it will hopefully be shut down soon.

I got offered four grand recently by a certain company who sends those messages:
'You have a won a holiday...'

It says on the website that the database is not for sale. People did sign-up to hear about 'student events in dublin though'. I wish now I had made the sign-up process more formal now (we had four part time staff who were a little sketchy with the details at the time).

Makaveli

Originally posted by Igy
The real annoyance came when someone (this links back to what ballooba said about sinister motives) added the address to about a dozen mailing lists, including one or two pornographic ones, so now that address is spam central.

This was really annoying what was more annoying was I accidently deleted real e-mails during the mass cull I did on my account.

Also on another topic related to the DIT e-mail accounts. Is anybody else getting return to sender error emails relating to emails they never sent? All of the outgoing emails contained a virus. I'm just wondering is it only happening to me?

briano

Is anybody else getting return to sender error emails relating to emails they never sent?

Yeah, Its a virus that spoofs your address. You are not actually sending the emails, but to anti virus software it looks like you did, so they send you back an email to tell you about it.

Makaveli

Yeah I know, I was just wondering if it's happening to anyone else because my college address is only known by college people.

DMT

Damn you rotten.com, damn you to hell...

Why did I open that pic?

briano

Did anyone get that email from David Mc Gettigan? He sent it to the 225 & 228 lists.

Its a video of some moron up in the snackery.

DMT

Originally posted by briano
Did anyone get that email from David Mc Gettigan? He sent it to the 225 & 228 lists.

Its a video of some moron up in the snackery.

Linkage?

briano

He emailed the video itself. I'd send it on but its not really worth it.

Its just a fella mucking about up in the snackery, pretending not to see the camera and then being shocked when he does. Its a little ghey to be honest.

If you really want the video, you could ask him yourself; it turns out that he is a "boardster". He posts about the DJ Soc in DIT a bit calling himself DJDangerousDave or something.

Ahh first years. They are so precious*

*read "dim"