Husaria wingLevinson Productivity Systems, P.C.
William A. Levinson, P.E.  Principal
570-824-1986
TheBoss at ct-yankee.com
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Policy

Scams of which you should be aware: Canadian Pharmacy, #1 Internet Online Drugstore, and "Online Yellow Pages"

Protecting your privacy from address harvesters

Revenge spams

Key antispam resources

Links to other antispam resources.




Antispam Policy and Resources

Company policy toward spam E-mail
Levinson Productivity Systems, P.C. has a zero tolerance policy toward unsolicited bulk commercial E-mail (UCE or "spam"). The company defines spam as an E-mail that meets all three of these criteria:
  1. It is unsolicited (that is, we never requested it or subscribed to it)
  2. It is bulk: the electronic equivalent of a form letter or a mass mailing
    • No one needs to worry about sending a personalized (i.e. one that shows that the sender actually read pages at this site) E-mail to this address even if it is commercial. Our assumption is that if it takes a human even a minute to write a note for each mailing, he is not blasting the same message to thousands or millions of addresses. "If you want someone to take the time to read it, you take the time to write it."
    • On the other hand, this company is aware of bulk mailing programs that insert a bit of customized information like a domain name or E-mail address to create the illusion that the sender is writing a unique E-mail. Any unsolicited E-mails from such programs will be dealt with as spam.
  3. It is commercial in nature
Any such E-mail can and will be reported as spam even if it includes an unsubscribe link; we are not obliged to unsubscribe from material to which we never subscribed.

Scams of Which You Should Be Aware

(1) "Canadian Pharmacy, #1 Internet Online Drugstore" is in criminal violation of CAN-SPAM Act for using ct-yankee.com in the return address of its spam E-mail
Important note, October 5, 2009. We received several returned spam E-mails with ct-yankee.com in the return address field. They did not originate from Levinson Productivity Systems, and the sender (advertising "Canadian Pharmacy, #1 Internet Online Drugstore"--an illegal online pharmacy) does not have our permission to use this domain name for any purpose whatsoever. The advertised Web site has been reported to the Food and Drug Administration for illegal sale of medications over the Internet, and to the FBI's Internet Crime Center for criminal violation (use of another person's or company's domain name as a fraudulent return address just to begin with) of the CAN-SPAM Act.

Canadian Pharmacy, #1 Internet Online Drugstore is a criminal enterprise, and anybody who actually tries to buy anything from them is putting their credit card information into the hands of criminals. (It is, just to begin with, against the law to sell prescription medications to people who do not have prescriptions. Furthermore, we tested their E-commerce system, and the connection is not secure even though the scammers have in the past fraudulently used the logos of Verisign and/or similar entities to claim that it is.) We encourage people to Google "Canadian Pharmacy, #1 Internet Online Drugstore" because this entity is very bad news; as just one example, the Web site "Ripoff Report" figures very prominently in the search results.

(2) "Online Yellow Pages," "Internet Yellow Pages," "National Yellow Pages" scam
The telemarketer tells you that they are calling to update your free online business listing. Then they turn you over to a "quality control" person to verify your information. The latter's job is to get you to say "yes" to a series of rapid-fire questions, into which they later merge a recording that makes it seem like you are agreeing to pay them hundreds of dollars for the listing. If you don't pay, they threaten to turn your account over to a collection agency.

Our experience is that they impersonate the genuine Yellow Pages and other legitimate businesses. On January 8 2010, A "Mike Adams" said he was from Yellowpages.com, and he directed us to his "quality control" supervisor Frank. When we attempted to look up Levinson Productivity Systems on Yellowpages.com, we could not find it, whereupon Frank said Mike had been mistaken and that the company was really Superpages.com. (We could not find our company listed there either). It is quite clear that "Mike" and "Frank" lied about representing Yellowpages.com and Superpages.com.

As for any attempts by these scammers to bill this company for anything (and we recommend that our visitors and prospective clients look into this as well), the scammers may as well send their bills  directly to this address and cut us out as the middleman. Note that the complaint form includes an entry for "False bill or notice" for "directory solicitation." The U.S. Postal Service takes a very dim view of those who use its resources to perpetrate wire fraud. Were a collection agency to contact us about such a bill, our immediate response would be to name them to law enforcement as either a material witness (i.e. with knowledge of the identity of those who sent the bill) or accomplice to a crime.

Complaints.com includes a story about how the scammers sent a bill by fax instead of U.S. Mail (maybe they know that it is not a good idea to use the U.S. Mail to perpetrate a scam) but there is also something known as wire fraud. We cannot give legal advice but our own inclination would be to forward any such bills to law enforcement agencies so they can decide whether it constitutes wire fraud or some other crime.
The reason the contact E-mail address is presented as TheBoss at ct-yankee.com instead of a standard mail link is to defeat spammers' address harvesting software. Junk E-mailers have software that crawls through Web pages and picks up anything in the format A@B.C where A is an address (e.g. A = TheBoss), B is a domain name (e.g. B = ct-yankee) and C is .com, .org, or .net. These addresses are then added to junk mailing lists and sold to other spammers.

This is why some companies don't post E-mail contact addresses. Instead, you have to fill out a form to send your message to them. As shown by the image above, you can also put your E-mail address on your web page as a .GIF or .JPG image (Microsoft Paint, which comes with Windows, can save images in both formats) which cannot be picked up by conventional address harvesting software.

If you post messages to newsgroups (e.g. misc.industry.quality) be sure to "spam block" your address because address harvesters also look through newsgroups. As an example, I might use TheBoss@SPAMBLOCKct-yankee.com. A person who wants to contact me can figure out that "SPAMBLOCK" should be removed from the return address but an address harvester will collect a nonexistent address.

Revenge Spams ("Joe jobs")
A revenge spam (also known as a "joe job" in news.admin.net-abuse.email) is an attempt to cause trouble for another person by sending spam with his/her E-mail address as a response address, or a spam that advertises his/her Web site. This company does not offer legal advice (we have no attorneys on staff) but common sense suggests that the spammer could easily be sued for defamation. If the spam advertises something illegal, it could constitute a "false accusation of a crime" which is automatically libel. The revenge spammer's Internet service provider would probably have to reveal the sender's identity if presented with a subpoena or court order. This company encourages the victim of any such conduct to contact an attorney regarding possible legal action.

Key Antispam Resources

Spam tracing
Report software piracy
XWhoIs: domain lookup
Sam Spade tools: OUTSTANDING

e.g. spams for "CD only, no retail box"
Adobe piracy reporting form
Business Software Alliance piracy reporting form. Also 1-888-NOPIRACY
Corel: Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft. Also nopiracy "at" corel.com
Microsoft: piracy "at" microsoft.com
Symantec (Norton) feedback; includes piracy reports
When complaining about spam, always include the full E-mail headers because this is what enables the service provider to identify the actual sender.

Links to other resources (valid January 2010) Newsgroup: news.admin.net-abuse.email

Abuse of the ASQ Section 209 PHP bulletin board

If you are finding this link through a "member" of the ASQ Section 209 bulletin board, the individual has been banned for trying to sign up a blog that redirects to an illegal online pharmacy or some other commercial site that has nothing whatsoever to do with the quality profession. The advertised blog has been replaced with a link to this page instead.
In fairness to the board's legitimate users (members of ASQ Section 209 and prospective employers who post job ads), spam cannot be tolerated, nor will the board's administrator tolerate the waste of his time by the would-be abusers. It is therefore our policy to cause the spammer hundreds of times as much damage as any benefit he might derive from attempted abuse of this resource (they should be aware that their memberships are automatically disapproved and the sites they attempt to advertise deleted on the spot), and the following punitive actions are routinely taken.
  1. The advertised blog is reported as a spam blog to Blogger or Blogspot. http://help.blogger.com/?page=contact
  2. The advertised illegal online pharmacy is reported to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency if it advertises any "controlled substance" like Phentermine, Valium, or Xanax.
  3. The advertised illegal online pharmacy is reported to its service provider. If the service provider is hosted in another country (e.g. Germany), that country's law enforcement agencies are copied on the complaint.
  4. The advertised illegal online pharmacy is reported to other entities (e.g. Verisign, Ontario County Sheriff) if it misuses their logos or seals to imply fraudulently that it is endorsed by those entities.
Spammers who think they can abuse this bulletin board, especially at levels rising to daily harassment, should be aware that one individual who did this lost seven domains (illegal online pharmacies). We then traced his domains to their next service provider and got them terminated from that one as well, simply for good measure. Any spammers who dislike these policies and their application should understand that we never come looking for them; we only apply these measures when they insist on bringing themselves to our attention. The antispam policy is posted very clearly on the bulletin board itself, and no one can say they are being blindsided when we come down on them like a ton of bricks.


visitors since 23 January 2010