"note of interest" from dmoz "competition" - is it spam

I received the following this afternoon. I suspect the 24-7 folk scraped addresses from the dmoz site submission status discussion (I just love it when people say "this isn't spam".... I'm curious to know if anyone else received it. If so, I'll report it to the appropriate ISPs.


--------------------------
I noticed your message on DMOZ today, regarding your site submission
status, and was just going to let you know if you are looking for
exposure, you may also be interested in registering with
http://www.24-7shoppingmall.com directory.

I know it can take awhile to get listed with DMOZ. I think the
24-7shoppingmall.com directory is also a human edited directory and
guarantees listings within 48hrs...

Anyway, this isn't spam, but rather just saw your enquiry and just
wanted to pass the note on as they listed us very quickly (we are under
their jewelry section).

Take care!

Michael.

Smells of spam to me - I got exactly the same message (on May 25) after posting in the Submission Status forum.

Graeme

You might look at this thread http://resource-zone.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=12200&highlight=24-7shoppingmall.com

and decide if there is any connection.

Graeme, thanks, that's what I needed to know. It sounded personable enough that it might not be, but the "this is not spam" *always* gets me .

Gentlemen,

It has been brought to our attention about a particular email that has been sent out to a number of DMOZ customers recently.

The situation had arisen when we had mentioned to an associate, that if he knew of some further people that would be interested in listing with us, by all means let them know. We would also enhance his listing if he were to refer some listings.

As it stands, his heart was bigger than his brain, and he did send some messages to some people within DMOZ. We have asked him to please cease and desist from this action or his listing may be at stake along with our reputation. In his defense, as he is not very computer literate, he did send every email as a separate email and had received a number of positive responses.

We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused. Again, he has agreed to cease and desist as he did not realize the problems it would cause.

Regards,

Michael.
Director of Marketing
michael@24-7shoppingmall.com
24-7Shoppingmall.com

odd.. still smells as if it wasn't a third party that did it.

Yeah, funny how they both sign themselves Michael (as opposed to Mike).

So Michael the Jeweler (the spammer) was going to get himself some easy $$$, or get his listing moved closer to the top, by bringing customers to Michael at 24-7. And it is *customers*, as one pays $30/yr for the privilege of being listed there.

Whether Michael the Jeweler is a dumb newbie, or an advanced hacker, or his secret identity is Michael at 24-7, is a moot point. I think it quite possible that 24-7 tacitly condones this behavior since they obviously did not warn their affiliates against spam / unsolicited commercial email.

austringer said:

Yeah, funny how they both sign themselves Michael (as opposed to Mike).

Click to expand...

... and both sign their name with a period at the end. Funny ain't it, these little coincidences.