Web Hosting Talk







View Full Version : More SPAM from a host


Everyday
06-13-2002, 11:39 PM
I can't believe this... They must have grabbed our webtech address from a customers site since thats the only place we use it.

From My New Found SPAM enemy :sickface: :spam: :flamethr: :spam:

The tracking number for your request is [V8Y9W2W].

Thank you for contacting pair Networks, Inc. We hope our World Class Web
Hosting services will fulfill all of your hosting needs. We look forward
to working with you.

Your inquiry to info@pair.com has been received and is now in our mail
queue. This automated response is merely a confirmation of receipt.

Please include the tracking number, shown in the Subject line of this
message, with any subsequent e-mail regarding this request. E-mail that
does not include the tracking number will be treated as a new request, and
will be handled separately.

info@pair.com is intended for use by prospective customers investigating
pair Networks, Inc. as a possible provider for their hosting services.
If you are currently a customer or pair Networks, Inc., please direct your
inquiries support@pair.com, upgrade@pair.com, sales@pair.com, or
billing@pair.com, as appropriate. For more information about contacting
us, please visit:

http://www.pair.com/pair/about/contact.html

Please do *not* send the same piece of e-mail to multiple addresses
-- this greatly reduces the chance that your request will be processed
promptly and correctly.

Please take a moment to review the material in this message, and accept
our apologies for any delay in getting a human response to your inquiry.

More information about pair Networks is available on the Web:

http://www.pair.com/ - our main Web site
http://www.pair.com/pair/compare/ - compare hosting plans
http://www.pair.com/pair/faq/ - our FAQ
http://www.pair.com/pair/support/ - our Support Forum
http://resellers.pair.com/ - information about our Reseller Programs
http://www.pair.com/pair/signup/ - sign up for an account
http://www.pair.com/pair/current/insider/ - our monthly newsletter

http://www.pairnic.com/ -- Domain Name Registration

We offer the following Shared Web Hosting Plans:

FTP Basic Adv. Webmaster
Server Disk Space 100 MB 100 MB 200 MB 400 MB
Included traffic per day 100 MB 100 MB 300 MB 500 MB
Virtual Domain? Yes Yes Yes Yes
FTP Access? Yes Yes Yes Yes
Telnet/SSH Access? No Yes Yes Yes
Access to system CGI-bin? No No Yes Yes
Access to personal CGI-bin? No No No Yes
Included Mailboxes 1 10 25 50
Setup Fee $20 $25 $30 $35
Monthly Fee $5.95 $9.95 $17.95 $29.95

Developer Commerce MIVA High Volume
Server Disk Space 600 MB 600 MB 1000 MB
Included traffic per day 500 MB 500 MB 1 GB
Virtual Domain? Yes Yes Yes
FTP Access? Yes Yes Yes
Telnet Access? Yes Yes Yes
Access to system CGI-bin? Yes Yes Yes
Access to personal CGI-bin? Yes Yes Yes
Included POP mailboxes 100 100 200
SSL Included Yes Yes No
MIVA Merchant/MIVA Empressa No Yes No
Setup Fee $50 $50 $50
Monthly Fee $49.95 $49.95 $129.95

* Domain name registration fees are not included in the prices listed.

+ Additional Disk usage will be automatically charged at the monthly rate
of $0.10/MB, based on average daily usage.

+ Additional traffic will be automatically billed at the monthly rate of
$4/10MB, where each 10MB represents an increase in the daily traffic
allowance. For High-Volume accounts, this rate is reduced to $3/10MB.
Rates for Dedicated Hosting are even lower.

You may add multiple virtual domains to our hosting plans at the rate of
$15 setup + $1/month. Each domain added will receive its own IP address,
and can be pointed to a subdirectory in your account. You will also have
full e-mail, FTP, and Web services, for all of the virtual domains hosted
on your account.

All virtual domains, added to a single Web hosting account, share the same
quota for the account that they are hosted on.

More details can be found on the following Web pages:

http://www.pair.com/pair/shared/
http://www.pair.com/pair/compare/options.html
http://www.pair.com/pair/specials/

For more information about our Dedicated Hosting Plans, please visit:

http://www.pair.com/pair/quickserve/

Thank you for contacting us! We will get back to you as soon as possible.

pair Networks Inc. - World Class Web Hosting
http://www.pair.com/


[ Automated message last updated March 7, 2002 ]

chrisb
06-14-2002, 03:24 AM
Originally posted by Everyday
I can't believe this... They must have grabbed our webtech address from a customers site since thats the only place we use it.


Maybe one of your customer's used that address and requested info from them. Perhaps the customer send it from their webmail. Check your mail logs and you may find a clue.

If that's not what happened, I'm not surprised; some big companies as well as some small companies spam; and I agree it is bad business.

fbsd4me
06-14-2002, 03:55 AM
Good grief… So let me get this straight. Pair invokes its own autoresponder to Spam you with. Really now… Before arriving at an assumption like that, you should complete some of the basic investigation work. Did you look at the headers? Do they appear forged in any way? In fact, does anything about that message indicative of Spam? Of course not! It’s a harmless autoresponder from their info address, and the message itself more than verifiers that.

Evidently, someone sent a message to info@pair.com, and that was the response. How did “they” (whoever it was) get your address? Who knows… People; the Internet, and this entire universe are anything but perfect. Someone probably made a mistake, or it ‘is’ possible that someone from your domain was inquiring about something at pair.

At any rate, there’s no need to sound off the Spam alarms just because someone’s autoresponder ended up in your mailbox. Things like this can happen from time to time, and sometimes it's just a mistake :)

chrisb
06-14-2002, 05:03 AM
Hey fbsd4me,
Was it really necessary to include his entire post in your quote?!?!? :)

<<MOD NOTE: Fixed, it was a bit long, heh...>>

Everyday
06-14-2002, 11:23 AM
I neglected to say I received over 20 of this same email from the autoresponder. This morning some of my customers have made a request for us to block these addresses since they too have received numerous emails.

So, no jumping to conclusions here. They appear to be very sly by using the autoresponder as a mailing list.

fbsd4me
06-14-2002, 12:14 PM
Really.... It’s wonderful how you love to complain here, but tell me… What do you expect to accomplish? Have you tried contacting pair? Did you mail their abuse department? Don’t you find it a little odd how “your” domain is the only one receiving this so-called spam like auto responder? At least contact them, and start from the beginning, as opposed to launching an arbitrary attack against (what otherwise) is a reputable provider. If you are not “at least” going to do that, then this discussion would be better suited to the news group alt.conspiracy.

In any event, I can assure you of this: Pair is not Spamming you. Go through the proper channels, and I’m certain you’ll see this for yourself. That is, if you’re “really” seeking a resolve to this issue.

Everyday
06-14-2002, 12:18 PM
Hey I'm just letting everyone know. I did contact them. They have responded saying it wasn't them. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't at any rate it is annoying and they are not making any effort to stop te emails flooding in to us...

No reason to jump down my throat, I'm not the one spamming.

fbsd4me
06-14-2002, 12:24 PM
Ok, fair enough…

But “if” someone is sending them messages using one of your addressees, it would be difficult for them to do a whole lot about that. It almost sounds as if someone is intentionally trying to antagonize you, but they’re using one of pairs email addresses to do it. I have no idea of why someone would do this for, and I can’t even begin to guess, but that’s almost what it looks like.

UmBillyCord
06-14-2002, 12:45 PM
Did you ever think maybe someone maybe screwing with you? How hard is it to keep sending e-mails with your return address? Just block the pair address. Done.

This is not Spam. Look at it. Also, I am sure the owner (Kevin) of Pair will drop by to confirm this as he frequents here.



PS - I just thought of something. You can blame this on Ensim some how. You are good at using a seven degrees of Kevin Bacon approach to somehow relating all your issues to Ensim. Try with this one.


1) Spammed from Pair =>
2) Pair uses servers =>
3) Servers need software =>
4) Software needs creators =>
5) Creators need jobs =>
6) Ensim is a good job =>
7) Ensim used Pair to Spam me!!!!


PSS - This is a joke. No offense.

chrisb
06-14-2002, 01:23 PM
I don't know if Pair spammed EIS or not. He did not post the headers, but they could've been spoofed anyway. Maybe EIS didn't tell us everything or explain it well; but give EIS a break, EIS feels that Pair spammed them and their customers, and that is not unbelievable.
I look forward to Pair's explanation.

sigma
06-17-2002, 10:10 AM
Originally posted by chrisb
I don't know if Pair spammed EIS or not. He did not post the headers, but they could've been spoofed anyway. Maybe EIS didn't tell us everything or explain it well; but give EIS a break, EIS feels that Pair spammed them and their customers, and that is not unbelievable.
I look forward to Pair's explanation.

Of course we have not "Spammed" anyone. It's utterly out of the question. What was quoted was the autoresponder from our info@pair.com address. I hope you've sent the details to abuse@pair.com, or if you haven't, you're welcome to send details to myself, sigma@pair.com.

In particular, if you find yourself getting an autoresponder over and over again, you may be in an autoresponder war, particularly if your autoresponder doesn't follow standards such as X-Loop headers. In that case, it would only take one person writing to us with the wrong return address to start a cycle of problems.

Thanks,
Kevin

Everyday
06-17-2002, 10:17 AM
We don't use an autoresponder on any of our addresses.

We received many, many emails from your autoresponder saying thanks for contacting pair. Then our customers started getting it. I sent an email to abuse@pair.com and received no response other than the explaination that we must have contacted you, which we didn't.

Since the email address was one that is on our design customers sites and is hidden it's obvious that the page must have been decoded or spidered or whatever the new trick is for the week. The address is for reporting problems about any of our sites that we designed, it is rarely used since there are few problems to report.

sigma
06-17-2002, 10:21 AM
Originally posted by Everyday
We received many, many emails from your autoresponder saying thanks for contacting pair. Then our customers started getting it. I sent an email to abuse@pair.com and received no response other than the explaination that we must have contacted you, which we didn't.

Since the email address was one that is on our design customers sites and is hidden it's obvious that the page must have been decoded or spidered or whatever the new trick is for the week. The address is for reporting problems about any of our sites that we designed, it is rarely used since there are few problems to report.

Your customers started getting it? Sounds like someone's trying to stir up trouble. I can assure you we have no interest in sending you nor your customers any unsolicited information.

Please drop me a note at sigma@pair.com and tell me what you told abuse@pair.com. I'll get to the bottom of this today.

There is a long history of Spammers trying to smear us in various ways, but this is kind of subtle to say the least.

Kevin

sigma
06-17-2002, 01:38 PM
As best we've been able to determine, the original e-mail which prompted the autoresponder to respond was generated by the Klez virus. Klez forges e-mail by picking addresses from an address book, so all it took was for someone who has your address to get infected :(

There's no record of any contact from you in abuse@pair.com, so please resend, or send to my personal attention at sigma@pair.com, if you have any further concerns about this.

For more information on the Klez virus and its many variants, start here: http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=klez

Sorry for the trouble, although I feel we are being unfairly portrayed as a source of the trouble, when in fact we are also a victim.

Just to restate the obvious, we do not Spam anyone, and are staunchly anti-Spam.

Kevin

Everyday
06-17-2002, 03:37 PM
Thats a reasonable enough explaination.