Got some interesting spam today. It was not only TO: me, but it was FROM: me. This intrigued me. The message said that I liked Spock.com, a new search service, so much that I wanted to share it with myself, in so many words.
This was as redundant as it was completely false, so I had to see how this could be. Possibly more of my contacts got this message. Often, when spam like this happens, the spammer gains illegal access to an address book of Person A and then spends out messages (the spam) to people in the address book, but not from Person A. They pick someone else, or scramble the whole address book up so it is difficult to see who actually had their address book hacked.
Anyway, that might be what happened here. I'm not sure yet. But I'm going to make it known to LinkedIN that it appears that this company, Spock.com, is possibly hacking their users' address books and then making it look like those users are recommending Spock.com to their friends by sending these spam emails (clikc on image above to see what the message looks like.
Did some cursory searching on this company Spock.com and found that I'm not the only one who is on the wrong end of their shenanigans. Here are my notes so far.
I've been in the tech area for years now and this kind of thing really gives the 'net a bad name. It's not just another annoying marketing ploy. It's completely dishonest and immoral. If I were a VC, I'd pull their funding and move on. It's just a matter of time before people who do this kind of thing get their comeuppance.