Unethical
Apr 16th, 2008 | By Val | Category: General Biz, Networking, marketing
This post is going to get long and it’s going to name names. So grab a coffee, or possibly something stronger, if it makes you as angry as it does me, you will need a good martini. lol Because today I want to discuss ethics and how to royally tick off the internet world and get yourself shut down completely. Since this is my mission for a certain samantha kobs right now.
It all started about two weeks ago when I got 4 newsletters in my email about advertising rates for SK’s newsletter. I double checked what email address they had been forwarded from ( I have everything dump into one main account so I don’t miss anything) and they are from my Mom Chat’s email addresses, so I KNOW I did not sign up for these newsletters. There is NO DOUBT that I did not sign up for them as these addresses are only used for advertisers and chatroom questions to be sent to me.
So I of course was talking to my two best buddies and low and behold, they had a ton sent to them as well. Anita had a lot of them and some of the addresses were made up and not even functioning addresses she has on a site. Lauren had more of the newsletters than I did. But both of them I think did have some of the addresses taken off.
We all contacted her and told her to take us off her list that we did not subscribe to. She said sorry and would take care of it. Fast forward to last week. Same thing of course. So I found the email to the FTC and forwarded them all on to them. Emailed her that I had done so and got same response. I will PERSONALLY take care of getting them off the list. Yeah, right, did not hold my breath. So that leaves us to this week right? TA-DA 8 of them today since she has messed up a link in one of them.
So now of course the word has gotten out and her entire list of 11,000 subscribers she says she has, is all harvested. Between 4 of us because Kara is now on the mission with me too, lol, we have talked to a ton of people. She has hit yahoo groups and many large message boards. I just went and banned her email address from Mommy’s Helper community so hopefully she didn’t hit there. But not a single WAHM has signed up for her newsletter and is getting multiples of them as well.
So now, what can everyone do? Well for one thing she has businesses online. Unbelievably she makes sites for others. So we need to get the word out not to do business with any of her sites and especially do not purchase ads from her. Samantha Kob’s email addy is samanthakobs @ yahoo.com, so for starters you report her to yahoo if you get spam. Secondly you can forward all her spam to the ftc (spam@uce.gov) and also report her to her newsletter service at abuse@streamsend.com.
Now here is what I will also be doing on top of that. I will be reporting to her hosting company. I will report to every company that is advertising on her newsletters. I’m not out to get the advertisers in trouble, but they need to be aware that someone is using their name and graphics illegally.
The sites in question are wahmwahm .com, directsalesmommy .com, salesmommy .com, partymom .net, samioriginals .com, hgpwebsites .com. I highly suggest you stay away from using her site for advertising or have her build you a site before we can have her businesses shut down by the ftc. You do not want to have your business associated with her name when she goes down.
This is a good show also of how networking works. We have spread the word out about her very quickly in the WAHM community. lol
Oh my gosh…now I know who you are talking about! Thank you for naming names! I know many people who are getting spammed by this woman and yes indeedy she does cruise forum boards looking to harvest and snag email addresses. Totally unprofessional and she needs to be shut down and kicked to the curb! Great blog post.
Go Val! I’ve passed the information around as much as I can. I’m sorry but she was warned and made the choice not to listen. I play by the rules, and expect others I do business with to do the same. If they aren’t, you better believe I’ll recommend people NOT do business with them!
Quickly isn’t the word, rofl!
I too of course was one of the victims. I honestly tried to ignore it. Well, not really, I did reply and inform her to remove my addresses and gave her links to the FTC to prove that what she was doing was illegal.
She chose to ignore our warning and continued to waste our time. She was well aware of the consequences and chose to play with fire.
Sorry but it’s time she get burnt. I don’t have time for these types of things.
I’m very careful before making a spam complaint – very careful. I’m afraid that maybe I signed up for something and just forgot or maybe I purchased something from someone who added me to a follow up list. However, where Samantha screwed up is when she used fake email addresses that were sent to my “catch all” account.
If anything … let this remind you exactly how serious spamming can be and what horrible effects it can have on your business!
Can you imagine what sort of constructive, legal things she could have been doing with the time it must have taken to harvest all of our email addresses?
Ignorance of the law is not an excuse! Educate yourself on proper business practices. This woman is literally making a very bad name for herself in the WAHM community. Not only will no one want to opt-in to her newsletters, but who would want to advertise on a site who’s owner has a bad name, or gove any of their business to that person. She’s hanging herself!
Wow, and I was thinking of advertising in the magazine. No thanks, don’t want to advertise with spammers
Sad now…. we need more wahm magazines and publications.
Even for a spammer, that is so 1998 of her! Geez – somebody needs to go to spamming school. I’m gonna let the ladies on Mompack know, this would be all too crazy if it is ‘their spammer’!
Lisa Marie Mary – from what I understand, she IS the “mom pack spammer”
So 1998 – ROFLMBO! That was just too funny!
Oh yes, it is the mom pack spammer! That’s why I’m so overly angry now! She was told months ago and is still getting email addresses. I will fight this to the end. Now that I have even more proof of her continued illegal activities I will hit my Mom Masterminds group and make sure they are aware of her.
You can add me to your victim list, thanks for giving me the head up about her. It’s a shame when people don’t understand the importance of running their business with good ethics.
[...] Apparently, there is at least one WAHM out there who has been accused of spamming. You can read more from the spamming victims at Working WAHM. [...]
OMG! I too was going to purchase an ad spot from her for a ground floor opportunity! Good thing I held off and waited! WHEW!! what a close call.
I tell you what…there’s no detective like a WAHM detective. LOL
I’ve received her spam as well. Thank you for taking a proactive stance on this and spreading the word.
Has anyone contacted her web host to complain about the spam?
Oh my, I have been getting those too and wondered when I could have possibly signed up for that list. I’m glad to know I’m not losing it for not being able to remember!!!! Thank you for posting this!
Hi, I too was getting emails from her. I emailed her 2 times and told her to stop spamming me. She finally responded and took my email off her list.
This is terrible! I am fortunate enough not to have been spammed by her. This kind of person ruins it for others who are genuinely trying to run a good, honest website. Thanks ladies for looking out for us!
She spammed me back in August 2007. Im positive she got my email from mompack so I alerted Julie ~ at which time Julie sent out an alert.
When I confronted Samantha (via email) about harvest my name from the mompack list and spamming me, this is how she replied:
Melissa,
We just purchased an e-mail list. I will remove you from our list. We apologize for the error.
Thank you
Samantha
I mean… does she really get any customers this way? Is it worth pissing off hundreds of potentially valuable networking contacts?
People kill me.