So when the situation calls for it, we move our table into the elevator lobby on our floor…

It doesn’t have a view like our regular ping pong room does, but we crash into the walls way less this way. And as people who host here can attest, crashing less is always a good thing.

Another week, another Happy DreamHost Customer with a gold medal.

And don’t try and say Shawn Johnson isn’t happy either!

Just look at those teeth!

Congratulations Shawn, and we appreciate you leaving the .dreamhosters.com in www.shawnjohnson.dreamhosters.com, no matter how trashy it looks!

(You know, those are really supposed to just be temporary domains, right?)

So far we haven’t had to do anything special to keep her blog up.. I guess since it’s not her main site.

This is actually getting kind of weird… what, did Nastia refer you to get the 97 bucks?

Congratulations, Nastia!

It’s unfortunate about your name, but at least you’ve got a gold medal!

Which is more than you can say for most Happy DreamHost Customers!

Domain Name: NASTIALIUKIN.COM
Created on: 07-MAR-02
Expires on: 08-MAR-09
Last Updated on: 17-FEB-08

Administrative, Technical Contact:
Liukin, Nastia liukinfan2004@yahoo.com.au
nil
PO Box 5727
Hughes
Canberra, ACT 2605
AU
0407266797

Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.DREAMHOST.COM
NS2.DREAMHOST.COM
NS3.DREAMHOST.COM

(Early this morning, one of our shared web servers ovaltine started crashing. We quickly narrowed it down to nastialiukin.com. At her website manager’s request, we moved her temporarily to a different shared server with nobody else on it. It also kept crashing!

So, we switched her (static html) site from Apache to lighttpd and immediately the load dropped from 200 to .2 (unfortunately, lighttpd is really only good for static files).. but then the network port started to saturate!

To deal with that, (again at her website manager’s request) we turned off the auto-playing flash mp3 streamer on the front of her site (who wants those anyway), and then things were finally under control!)

Go visit and watch that visitor # in the corner GROW!

As the resident WordPress nerd around these parts, I get to spend a lot of my time at DreamHost solving super interesting blog problems.  Knowing about security holes, plugins that don’t play nicely with our environment, working around weird quirks and staying on top of the bleeding edge is all in a day’s work for me.  Sometimes, dealing with the really hard issues are kind of a hassle — but mostly I’m just happy that someone’s paying me to mess around with blog software.  After all, making a living doing something you love is pretty freaking sweet.

Seriously.  Try it if you ever get the chance.

Anyhow, since I’m sort of a big geek, I’m actually getting pretty psyched for WordCamp San Francisco this weekend.  Not only will the road trip up from Los Angeles give me a chance to make another lip dub or two — but I’ll also get to hang out with the likes of Matt Mullenweg, Tantek Çelik, Om Malik and the SEO Rapper.

It’s the last one on the list that I’m a little more excited about. I mean, I’ve met and talked with Matt at the last two WordCamps and see Tantek down in LA every now and then — but the SEO Rapper is on YouTube! That makes him internet famous enough that my mom might have heard of him!

Just in case I get too star struck, we’ll have a couple other DreamHosters there to pull me away and calm me down.  If you see one of us (pictured above) in the hall, feel free to come up and say hi, okay?

What’s that mean? It means that we listen to our employees. It means we’re transparent in how we do things and why we do them. It means that, coincidentally, we’re also a great place to work!

Axiom News of Canada recently recognized our commitment to the democratic workplace in a three-part series.

E-meetings Engage all DreamHost Employees in Corporate Decision-Making

We really don’t have too many meetings around here. We use email lists. A lot. We don’t restrict employees from joining any list - in fact, we encourage it. If someone in tech support wants to listen in on our developers or system administrators, they’re welcome to do so! If anyone has a suggestion for system improvements, or a general comment about our operations, it shows up on an email list first.

DreamHost’s Unique Profit-Sharing System Results in High Morale, Strong Retention

We’ve literally been giving our company away since the very beginning. Every DreamHost employee is issued units in the company. (Units are kind of like the equivalent of ’stock options’ for an LLC.) At most companies those options are sold to employees at a discount - but not at DreamHost. We just go ahead and GIVE them to our employees at no cost. Once you’ve been working here for a reasonable amount of time you’re actually made an owner of the company!

Flat Management Structure Promotes Productivity, Retention at DreamHost

There are no cubicles at DreamHost. Our open-door policy springs from our roots as a dot-com startup, when teams were small and titles were meaningless. Our teams have grown since then and we’re still not too big on titles, but one thing we haven’t done is closed the door on inter-company communication.

We’re honored to have been recognized by WorldBlu and Axiom News. It’s a good feeling to see people interested in promoting what we’ve considered to be basic business practices from day one.

DreamHost really is a great place to work, and we’re always on the lookout for new talent to add to our team. If any of what you’ve just read appeals to you, be sure to check out our open positions and send in your resume today!

We just felt a BIG earthquake! Okay, just a 5.8, but it sure made our 50th story office BOUNCE!

Don’t worry, all data centers are okay!

There’s something I’ve always hated about the web hosting business.

No, it’s not the cut-throat competition, the crazy customers, or the California climate.

And NO, it’s not the 5-hour work week NOR the oodles of money either… those are fine.

It’s the domain names.

(And, by extension, ICANN.)

The problem with ICANN, as I may have mentioned before, is that they are an organization created to serve a need that just doesn’t need serving.

They do get things right once a decade though, like finally fixing the “domain tasting” problem.

But do they really need meetings in Fiji, Geneva, South Africa, etc…, along with a $20 MILLION annual budget to finally do what registrars had been telling them to since the Clinton presidency?

And now, ICANN’s made a bold new move that they claim results in “a massive increase in the ‘real estate’ of the Internet.”… the open creation of new TLDs (top-level domains).

So… what does this “open creation of new TLDs” actually mean.

Well, what it DOESN’T mean is that you’ll be able to go to any registrar and just register joshisawesome.believeit. Which is too bad, because if that were the case, everybody would finally have to belive it.

Nope. Instead, all that’s happening is now “anybody” can apply to start a new TLD… as long as they explain to ICANN how it will be used, prove to ICANN they have the technical prowess to run a registry, and pay ICANN an estimated $100,000 to $500,000.

Call me crazy cuckoo, but I believe that’s exactly how the new TLD creation process works now!

You know .info, .biz, .coop, .asia and all those other new TLDs? Pretty sure those went through a process exactly like ICANN is describing now for future TLDs.

In the announcement they did say that people aren’t going to be able to register trademarks (like .pepsi), nor offensive words (like .dreamhost), nor I assume TLDs less than 3 letters (like .i).

What exactly is changing here?

As far as I can tell, the only thing ICANN is saying is that they’re finally standardizing the process for applying for new TLDs. The goal I guess being to make it faster and easier to add more and more TLDs in the future…

Which is to whose benefit?

Have you ever met a person (or company) not involved in the domain name industry suggest the need for a new TLD? Ever? I haven’t!

There is honestly no demand for new TLDs (besides that for newly created countries, which are known as ccTLDs, and are not what we’re talking about here) from anybody who doesn’t stand to make money from the registration of domain names.

And that is because there’s only one thing that makes a particular domain name desirable for legitimate use: clarity.

That’s it. That’s why brand names and generic word domains are valuable, that’s why short domains are valuable, and that’s why no matter how many new TLDs are created, everybody still wants .com.

It is a huge obstacle for any TLD to offer a domain that is clearer overall for its intended use than some still available .com. Blame it on consumer ignorance, but I know I’d still rather have jjflowerslosangeles.com than flowers.la.

(And who types URLs anyway these days?)

Again I must ask, all these new TLDs are to whose benefit?

As far as I can see, the only possible beneficiaries are those actually in the domain name monetization industry.

More possible TLDs means more possible typos, more defensive registrations by trademark holders, and possibly some money to be made from the few suckers who don’t realize that flowers.la is not a clear domain.

What new TLDs will be made?

Hmm… we’re not going to be seeing company-based TLDs (e.g. .ibm, .coke) anytime soon; I doubt IBM is that interested in switching over from ibm.com. And since ICANN announced people can’t register trademark infringing TLDs, IBM won’t have to do it defensively either.

I guess I could see a case being made for TLDs that better categorize the type of site being visited, perhaps things like .blog, .wiki, .forum, .shop. Except, we’ve already got sub-domains for that!

In fact, www.blah.blog is exactly the same number of characters at blog.blah.com; all we’d be doing is switching a .com for a www. (And don’t try to say people would just use http://blah.blog/… that’d be even less clear!)

Not to mention, where you once had just one domain name to manage (and pay for), you’ve now got dozens… all with different registries, different rules, and probably different expiration dates.

Maybe there’s a case for making more location-based TLDs, perhaps things like .nyc, .sf, .miami, .toledo. But again, we’ve already got the country-code TLDs, and besides, isn’t the Internet supposed to be international? Just use local search to find local stuff.

(Can you really see people just guessing the URL “www.taxi.chicago” directly on their iPhone 4G. Ha, it is to laugh!)

What about price?

I don’t know if ICANN is going to just charge just a flat fee per TLD, or if they’re going to keep charging a per-domain fee like they do now. If it’s the status quo, then there is really no hope for interesting new uses of TLDs.

If, however, there is no incremental fee to ICANN for more domain names… welcome to the dawning of the age of domainius! Free domainius, that is.

Of course, any free TLDs would have to be tied to some particular application, otherwise squatters would immediately register every possible domain and put them up for auction.

I can see a free email provider getting .mail, a free blog host .blog, a free photo site .pics.

(There’s not that much of a benefit in having josh.blog as opposed to say, josh.blogger.com … but I guess since you’re going to be the 10,000,000th result on Google, you might as well go for the shorter URL!)

Auctions Smauctions

Did you see recently that the guy in charge of domain auctions at GoDaddy was discovered bidding up their own auctions?! That is some real bush league crap; to be totally expected throughout the entire domain name industry.

In fact, in case this blog post isn’t loooooooooong enough for you, let me now take a moment to relate a personal anecdote of mine about a domain auction.

Back in January, my wife was starting a floral design business, and had decided upon a name for it. Unfortunately, the obviously best domain name for her website was already taken, and being used by a squatter on sedo.com. Rather than dealing with them, she just registered a slightly longer variation that was still available.

Well, her birthday was coming up, so I decided to see what it’d cost to get that “best” domain. I went to the site, clicked the link to “make an offer”, and entered $100.

Immediately my bid was rejected!

It said the minimum offer the owner of this domain would accept was $777! Highway robbery!

After thinking about it for a little while, I figured, what the hey, it’s a birthday present, and I want to see how this thing works, so I made a (completely insane) bid for $777.

Automatically the system responded saying the owner had made a “counter-offer” back… $7770!!!

(How iiiiiiiiiiiiiiinteresting… sedo has a completely automated system for domain owners to counter-bid on domains.)

Well, harrumph. I raised my offer to $800. Immediately I got a “response” from the seller staying firm at $7770, and that was their final offer!

At this point I was curious… would they lower their price at all? So, I countered back with what I pretty much figured was the most I’d spend for this (completely of no value to anybody but my wife) domain, $1150.

What happened next really surprised me… I got another automated message stating that I had surpassed some secret minimum offer the seller had set at which they were, no not willing to actually sell the domain for, but at which they were okay with automatically putting it up for a seven-day auction on the front page of sedo.com… and my offer was the starting “bid”!

Gee thanks!

That explained why there are so many domains on that page with just one bid yet really high prices!

Well, at that point I figured I’d just sit and wait… nobody else was going to be bidding more than $1150 for this obscure domain name! And, the auction was ending the day before my wife’s birthday anyway, so the timing worked out.

I waited the whole week, and of course, nothing happened. The auction was going to end at 8:04 AM on a Saturday, but I didn’t even plan on waking up to watch the end.

Whoops. When I did wake up, at 8:12 AM, I (sneakily) immediately checked on the auction… only to find that somebody else had won; with a bid of $1175 at 7:56 AM!

I wasn’t horribly upset; after all $1150 was an order of magnitude more than I’d intended to pay. But I just knew in my gut of guts (I have four) that the winning bidder was either the original seller, somebody working for sedo.com, or somebody who figured I’d pay even more to buy it from them later! One thing I knew it wasn’t was anybody intending to actually use the domain.

You’re still here?

That, in a large ostrich nutshell, is why I hate domain names. The secondary domain name industry exists purely to squeeze profit from consumer confusion, artificial scarcity, and literal extortion. No actual value has been added to the universe, just a redistribution of money from people who have a valid use for a clear domain to people who registered that clear domain first.

And this is not, I repeat not, sour grapes of wrath by me, just because back in 1994 (when I first discovered whois) I checked all these big public company domain names like honda.com, toyota.com, and mcdonalds.com, (I wasn’t too creative back then) and found them all to be AVAILABLE.

I thought to myself, “Whoa. These companies would probably pay hundreds of dollars for their domains in a year or two!” To top it off, way back then domain names were completely free… you only had to apply for them with Network Solutions.

But, I decided against it, entirely because I thought it’d be sleazy. I swear it was not because I was afraid of getting sued, nor because I didn’t actually know exactly how to apply for a domain.

Nope, it was solely due to my irreproachable morals and incredible dignity.

You see, I decided to take the noble path and start DreamHost Web Hosting, where we earn our money fair and square: through over-selling, over-charging, and, every once in a long while, even over-blogging.

Guess who got a 3G iPhone… two weeks early?

Try not to be too jealous of me, but… me!

Hooo yeah, it is SO sweet, being able to download web pages, like 90 times faster. Not to mention, I can access the iTunes Store anywhere now, so I can rock out to 30 second clips of whatever song I want, anytime I want, for FREE. Plus, YouTube works better now, with higher video quality and faster streaming.. not to mention downloading and updating apps is lickety-split!

To top it off.. my 3G iPhone is already UNLOCKED and on T-Mobile, AND I share the 3G network over wi-fi (802.11g) to my laptop, my Nintendo DS, and everybody else riding my bus!

Now, how did I finagle all this awesomeness? You might say, being the greatest corporate blogger IN THE WORLD is finally starting to pay dividends!

Or, you might say… I just got one of these:

The PHS300 from Cradlepoint

So, the truth is, I’ve still got my old iPhone.

Ain’t nobody beating down my door with free new gadgets to test and review. But, what this “Personal Hot Spot” does is take any one of the USB high-speed data modems on the market right now in the US from Verizon, Sprint and AT+T and turns it into a portable, rechargeable battery-powered, wi-fi hotspot!

I had heard about this thing before but I’d sort of forgotten about it. And with the new iPhone news, I was thinking, “Man, if only the iPhone could just share its 3G network over wi-fi, turning itself into a little portable hotspot, that would make it perfect.”

And that’s what made my brain remember about it; it was right about the time I was testing all the various USB modems and starting to accept that I was going to have a HUGE dongle sticking out of my laptop all the time. The PHS300 saved the day with its 100% pure awesomeness..

Pure Awesomeness

Oh, pure awesomeness, let me count thy ways:

1. You can plug any of the various USB modems out there and they immediately just work.
2. Therefore, you don’t have to install any of the relatively crappy software drivers on your laptop.
3. Therefore, my VPN now works fine on all of them.
4. Therefore, macs/pcs/linux machines all work fine… and with zero configuration.
5. Now, dozens of machines/phones/gaming systems can all share your one USB modem.
6. The web-based management it provides works great and has every feature you’d expect from any 802.11b/g wireless router.
7. From completely off to connected to the 3G network on wi-fi only takes about 30 seconds.
8. The battery lasts a bit over 2 hours, enough time for my daily bus rides.
9. The PHS300 also works while charging from the wall.
10. It only costs $145.

More Testing

Being a huge nerd, I decided to do some performance testing of my new 3G wi-fi setup. In this case, since I’d already returned the Sprint Compass 597 USB modem, I tested another Verizon modem (the USB720 this time) vs. the AT+T USBConnect 881 modem, both directly connected to my laptop, and through the PHS300.

(A few notes:

1. My apologies to Verizon. It looks like the slowness from my last test was more due to the PCMCIAM interface to my laptop, rather than the speed of their EVDO Rev. A network! Using this USB720 modem brought it up to the speeds I’d seen from Sprint’s modem.

2. I pinged craigslist.org this time instead of google.com. For some reason craigslist’s ping times were much better across all the various networks.)

Now, for the two things I found:

1. The PHS300 added about 10-30ms to average ping times it seemed. No big deal.

2. For some reason the AT+T down/upload speeds were essentially HALVED by the PHS300. I thought that I must have been hitting some (surprisingly low) threshold for throughput of the device, but then the Verizon modem performed the same whether it was through the wi-fi or not! Weird.

So…

That “halving” effect is a technical mystery to me… and it’s making it hard for me to decide if I should keep the AT+T modem or just stick with the (USB) Verizon one. HMM! The Verizon USB720 does have this annoying super-bright flashing green light on it, but that doesn’t matter if it just stays hidden in my bag all the time I guess.

Anyway, in case I haven’t made it clear, I really like this PHS300 thing. It’s 100% pure awesomeness. In fact, it’s so awesome, it’s small enough to fit in my pocket, so I can walk around and be a human hotspot, a full five years before the rest of America!

I also like having a hotspot in my car (again, a full five years before it comes standard in all new KIAs).

Especially since you can’t talk on the phone while driving in California anymore, I’m definitely going to have to be doing a lot more emailing, instant messaging, and pushing out while driving!

So, what with all this mobile spam and iPhone 3G talk, I spur-of-the-day decided last week to check out Sprint and AT+T’s current wireless data offerings.

Well, mostly spur-of-the-day. It was also because my current laptop is starting to die (just like my last three VAIOs, something comes loose somewhere deep inside its soul, and it begins to just randomly turn off), dammit. So, since I’m pretty sure my next laptop is not going to have a PCMCIA slot to fit my current Verizon EVDO modem, I need to get a USB dongle one anyway.

I also kinda wanted to check out how the coverage and speed was on AT+T’s 3G network, just in case I need to switch over to it come July 11th. I’m sorry T-Mobile, it’s been great, but you still ain’t got no high-speed Internets!

While at Radio Shack I also decided to get the USB modem Sprint makes and try it out. Despite the 2-year contract you need to sign to get $60/month (for only 5GB of transfer now!) and the $150 off the devices, both providers have a trial period so I figured might as well. And, Sprint has their new “Compass 597″ USB modem which is not only itty-bitty, but has a microSD card slot AND GPS.

A few things I noticed right at the store: Sprint’s rebate (at least at Radio Shack) was mail-in and left the price of the modem at $50, whereas AT+T’s was instant and made the modem free. But, as if to make up for that, AT+T did a sleazy thing where they automatically add one month of “free” roadside assistance to your account. You cannot opt out of it, and if you don’t call to cancel they’ll start charging you $3 a month for something probably all your credit cards already provide you for free. Boo!

The Tests

To test each card, I first did a bunch of pings to google.com, and recorded the dropped packets, minimum, maximum, and average ping times. Then, to measure the download speed I downloaded iTunes (56MB) from apple.com, and to measure the upload speed I then uploaded it right back to a DreamHost server via FTP…

At Home

At home, I have pretty close to perfect coverage for Verizon, Sprint, and AT+T. Under these ideal conditions I found:

Wow.. DreamHost is the bandwidth king! Ha!

Ha, well, I just threw in my home cable modem connection and DreamHost’s data center for comparison purposes… AT+T seems to be the current wireless bandwidth king! Sprint looks a bit better in the latency department, but only by a hair, and all three were fast enough to not even notice a lag in a remote shell window.

The Road

For my next test, I rode the bus to work like I do, down the 10 freeway in Los Angeles. Along the way, all three have great coverage; except actually Verizon’s EVDO Rev. A (”Broadband Access”) drops down to 1xRTT (”National Access”) a couple of times. 1xRTT, like everybody’s “2G” technologies, is slowwwwwwwww and suuuuuuuuuuucks. And, annoyingly Verizon’s “VZAccess Manager” software seems (at least for me) to never be able to jump back up to EVDO once it’s dropped down to 1XRTT without manually disconnecting and reconnecting.

At 60 MPH, both Sprint and AT+T’s download speeds were cut in about half, to 60 KB/s and 130 KB/s, respectively. Good scientist that I am, I, um, forgot to do the upload test (or test Verizon), but even if Verizon performed exactly the same as it did at home, it would have still been slower!

Ping times more or less stayed constant.

The Office

Our new office is way up there, and cell phone coverage of all kinds is a bit spotty. What I learned at the office was you do not want to use any of these in a location where they drop back to their “2G” speeds.

At 700 feet, all three of them are in the 10-30% packet loss with 400 ms ping times range… along with download speeds around 10 KB/s and upload speeds around 5 KB/s! I did learn that it seems like both Sprint and AT+T are better at automatically noticing when they can switch back to EVDO/HSDPA than Verizon was, and it’s nice not having to re-connect things yourself.

The Software

Something nobody seems to ever mention in reviews of these wireless data services is what the client software you have to install is like. Well, nobody bar me!

Sprint’s is garbage, Verizon’s is fine, AT+T’s seems good.

Sprint’s software took the longest to start each time (AT+T was a little slower than Verizon, but both were still twice as fast as Sprint), couldn’t minimize to the system tray, and, worst of all, doesn’t work with a VPN! At least not mine! If you connect to the VPN while connected to Sprint, about three seconds later you’re disconnected. Then, if you tried to re-connect, the Sprint software gives an error about being connected to another network device! DEAL BREAKER!

Also, the MicroSD slot is useless for me, and the built-in GPS I guess is interesting but I couldn’t figure out how to make it do anything besides give me my current latitude and longitude.. in degrees! Are you supposed to cut and paste it into google maps or something? Anyway, if I’ve got an Internet connection, I generally don’t need GPS.

As for Verizon’s software, the one thing I always wish they added was a signal-strength meter in the system tray when minimized. AT+T’s software does this, yay! Other than that, both are pretty much fine. They’re simple, don’t get in the way, and work with my VPN. (Er, I think.. I think I need to do a little more testing with AT+T…)

The Device

It’s true, Sprint’s modem is the smallest. However, it also sticks out the furthest from your laptop, like a USB stick. The AT+T one is about as big as one of those old Nokia brick phones, but at least it has a hinge so it is aligned veritcally. The Verizon one actually has the smallest form factor outside the laptop, just because the PCMCIA part is so big. But, my next laptop probably isn’t going to have a PCMCIA port, dammit!

ATT BFF

So, I guess it’s probable pretty clear by now, I’m going to go ahead and stick with the AT+T 3G device. It does have the biggest physical footprint, but I’ve already devised a plan to deal with that! Stay tuned for how that turns out…

I guess I’m sort of glad my laptop started dying, dammit.

(My mobile broadband is now four times faster!)

The other day I bought one of those new banana creme-filled Twinkies!

It seemed delicious enough, and it was!

After eating it in six seconds, I noticed on the wrapper they had some kind of cool contest going on!

It said I could enter by visiting their website or by sending a text message to them.. how modern of Hostess!

Since I couldn’t find anything about the contest at hostesscakes.com, I decided, what the hey… I’ll text em to win!

I’d never done any of those “text blah to 1234 to win” things before, so I was mostly curious to see if I’d start to get mobile spam…

Well, I texted. And, I got:

Sorry, UR not a winner. Play again tomorrow! Thx from Hostess. See rules at www.hostesscakes.com. Std/other txt msg rates apply. Help? Txt HELP.

So I decided to send them “HELP”. I got back:

4 help w/the sweepstakes, pls email us incl cell number hostess@promosvcs.com or call 8663510327 2 stop, txt STOP. Other charges may apply

Hmm, okay, I figured I’d better send them “STOP” now. So I did, and received…

This message confirms that u have unsubscribed and will no longer receive messages from Hostess sweepstakes. Questions email hostess@promosvcs.com

Alright, fair enough… I figured after that perhaps they were nice and legit and weren’t going to keep sending me messages or sell me out to 3rd party lists.

Two Days Later

I got a text message.

It was from “757-14″, and it said:

RingAZA! Enter UR PIN online to get UR BONUS TONES & Credits! 9.99/mo UR PIN = 2679. Info=HELP or 1-866-616-6067 Quit=STOP. othr chrgs may apply

Twinkie the Kid had sold me out!

I couldn’t believe it. Well, I sort of could. I guess I asked for it. Nevertheless, I texted back, “STOP” though I did it with the same feeling one gets when trying to stop a tsunami with a paper napkin.

RingAZA! U have been unsubscribed from Text Alerts. You will not receive any additional messages going forward. More info 866-616-6067

Hmm, well, maybe I was in the clear after all…

The Next Day

RingAZA! Great Job, Ur Ringtones R Ready! Reply YES now & Pick all Ur Bonus Content! UR not being billed 4 this msg. 4 info: http://75714.net. Sub = 9.99/mo

There’s just something so creepy about TXT-speak in corporate messages (and spam).

Just for the hey of it again, I once more sent back “STOP”… and again got exactly the same unsubscribe message.

RingAZA! U have been unsubscribed from Text Alerts. You will not receive any additional messages going forward. More info 866-616-6067

The Next Day

To my absolute surprise, nothing!

And actually, I haven’t gotten a single sms spam since then. Maybe there IS some sort of higher level of accountability to txt spamming, since for your “short code” (e.g. 75714) to work you have to actually make a deal with all the major cell carriers?

I dunno why, but this incident got me thinking a little bit about what the “state of the spamming world” must be like these days.

It’s got to be getting at least a little harder to get people’s email addresses as a spammer, right? It used to be everybody had their email address on their web site, or in their WHOIS info, or publicly posted to a newsgroup or a mailing list, or used it when registering for anything online.

Nowadays, it seems like everybody’s just got a contact form, uses Domain Privacy, just posts in online forums (where their email is hidden), and uses throw-away hotmail/yahoo/spam.la addresses when creating online accounts.

And on top of it all, spam filtering is finally getting a bit better. I bet them’s some lean times right now in the email spam business.

One More Anecdote

In fact, I have another little story about how desperate times seem to be for spammers!

My wife recently started a floral design business, and so she got a couple of those door magnets for our car advertising her business URL, phone number, and email address.

Well, one time we got back to the car and noticed one of the two magnets was gone! How strange we thought.. had it fallen off? Had somebody taken it? If so, why? As a prank? Was it a competitor? Maybe a potential customer who didn’t have a pen handy?

That was sort of annoying, but not a huge deal; it was only $17.

But then a funny thing happened.

About a week later, my wife got her first spam ever to her newly-created business email address.. the one that’d been on the magnetic car door sign!

Man, those spammers must really be desparate to stoop to such labor-intensive, low-brow email address-harvesting techniques!

And what was that spam for?

Magnetic car door signs!

Ha, I couldn’t believe it! And ever since then, she gets about three spams a week to that address.. all for magnetic car door signs!

It’s not spam, it’s blackmail!