Mass email Marketing and anti-spam - some of the how-to..
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I'm sure I've mentioned on this blog (probably a few years ago), that we spent about a year developing a very good anti-spam tool. The basis of which was using a huge number of mysql stored procedures to process email as it is accepted and forwarded using an exim mail server.
The tricks that it uses are numerous, although generally come from best practices these days.
The whole process starts off with creating a database with
If an email / server / domain combo is new and not seen before, then apart from greylisting, and delaying the socket connections we also have a optional manual approval process. (using the web client).
Moving on from that we have a number of other tricks, usually involving detecting url links in the email and seeing if any of the email messages that have been greylisted (with different 'from') are also using that url.
On top of this, is a Web User interface to manage the flow and approvals of email. You can see what is in the greylist queue, set up different accounts for different levels of protection (either post-delivery approval, or pre-delivery approval etc..)
This whole system is very effective, when set up correctly. It can produce zero false negatives, and after learning for a while, is pretty transparent to the operations of a company. (email me if you want to get a quote for it, it's not that expensive...)
So after having created the best of breed anti-spam system, in typical fashion, we get asked to solve the other end.. getting large amounts emails delivered to mailing lists.
If you are looking for help with your mass email marketing systems, don't hesitate to contact us sales@roojs.com
Read on to find out how we send out far to many emails (legally and efficiently)
A friend of mine received a letter the other day from the Hong Kong Inland Revenue Department (IRD), It was addressed to her company, and cc'ed to Her (at the bottom of the letter). The letter was titled "Notice For Recovery of Tax Under Section 76(1) of the Inland Revenue Ordinance."
Her first reaction was "This must be some kind of mistake", I'm not a boss/owner of this company, I guess they must be sending it out to all the employees.
Anyway, to help her out, I thought I'd phone up the IRD to find out why this letter arrived. It did not take long on the phone to realized that this letter was actually meant for her. So we did a little more reading of the letter. It turns out that it was a demand notice for.... wait for it....
"Notice 1" for Final Assessment for the year 1993-1994 in the sum of HK$309 (that's about US$40 or 20GBP)
To be honest I thought this was hilarious.. they had waited nearly 15 years to send out a first reminder to pay the amazing sum of HK$309.. Got to be one of the best examples of real government incompetence I've seen in a long while..
While it's not a huge issue in terms of finding the money (raid the piggy bank), I though it raised quite a few questions, some rather serious.
1) Why address demand letters to employers rather than employees?
2) Is this not over 6 years (the standard for Statue of limitations - or Hong Kong's equivalent legislation)
3) How are you supposed to challenge this? - I sent a cheque in 1993, it was cashed, you should have the payment? - nope, no human (except the IRD it seems) keeps records that long.
4) What if it had been a larger amount? one day you where happy with nice savings, looking to buy a house. Next you are wacked from nowhere and close to bankrupt with a huge bill from IRD, that you never knew about?
5) How many of these bills are there? - are all Hong Kongers going to be paying back-taxes for issues over 10 years ago? Will you get one every year?
6) Is this some kind of computer glitch?
7) Was someone pocketing the cash that long ago? and the system has only just been picking it up? Is there some kind of Superman fraud going on here....?
8) How on earth could they justify this? My friend has been paying tax every year for the last 15 years, so it's not like they did not have her address..
Oh well back to trusting our intelligent overlords..
Banks, while never perfect corporate citizens usually at least try to behave in a reasonable maner. That is probably why I was fuming with anger at Wing Lung Bank in Hong Kong.
I have a credit card from this bank, that was given out as HKIA uses them for their membership cards, and my spouse being a member, just signed me up for it. I normally use American Express for most payments, but some shops don't accept it so having a Visa card is quite handy.
We always pay off the balance every month, I normally sit down around the 1st or 2nd of each month and clear the bills. I must have been doing this for at least 6 years, and I've had the Wing Lung card for I guess more than 3 years.
So yesterday when I got a letter from them indicateing we had not paid the bill, I was a little supprised. That turned out to be me forgetting to pay my wife's bill last month, as she doesn't use the card normally, so the is normally nothing to pay. However while checking the other bills, I noticed a finance charge, and a late payments charge. I was pretty certain that I had paid last month on time, so I checked closer, I had paid the bill on the second of the month, which was the usual date. Then I spotted the problem..
WING LUNG, THE BUNCH OF CROOKS HAD CHANGED THE PAYMENT DUE DATE!!!!
They had moved it back about 10 days, resulting in the card running up late charges.
Not only that, I started checking the older statements,and realized the had pulled this slight of hand 5 months ago, raking in a tidy sum for their criminal coffers.
By this time I was fuming, and called their hotline, my temper not subdued by their annoying 'press 2 for..' and playing adverts for their services while waiting.
After practicalling screaming at two idiots who refused to refund the money and change the payment date, and listening to them try and justify this crazy action 'your agreement states we can change the terms at any time' They promised that a manager would call back.
Of- course, this call never arrived, so today I cancelled the card, filed a complaint with our consumer council. (Hopefully at least they will issue a warning about them Changing the due dates, so other customers don't get caught out.)
From what I've been hearing, this is not the first bank to pull this scam.. Well, Wing Lung will not be one of the place's I'm going to get a mortgage from...
