Hello,
--- Jeremy Kinsey <jer@mia.net> wrote:
> > I read somewhere the list was reset because of fears spam
> harvesters
> > would jump at the chance for a big list of emails/contacts.
> >
> > It wasn't confirmed anywhere, but it kinda makes sense.
>
> That could be possible, but you have the option of not showing your
> email, which is what I did.. I think (from what I read) that there
> was
> a technical problem that caused it however.. At least it is back up,
> and someone had the foresight to back up the petition at 10k.
Obviously PetitionOnline.com has the mailing list/contacts. Not sure if
they are spammers (I've not received any spam from them, except from
the initial email). They seem honourable, to be running the service for
free.
I, as petition author, also had access to a *subset* of the emails
--only those who opted to show their emails to the author (the default
was to not show). I'm not a spammer, though. I was very careful, after
I archived the dataset to print out (for the FedEx to ICANN of the
first 10,000 signatures) to redact (remove) the emails from the
printout, and from the final Excel spreadsheet. I even went so far as
to create a separate Excel spreadsheet (brand new), and copy/paste from
the old spreadsheet, because as many of you are aware, sometimes
Microsoft file formats retain data that has apparently been deleted
(i.e. when I deleted the "emails" column).
When we imported the data to the new petition site at
http://www.whois.sc/verisign-dns/
I only gave the WHOIS.SC folks the spreadsheet *without* the emails.
The new petition also defaults to opt-out for emails, i.e. they have to
change it to opt-in in order to receive any announcements. The WHOIS.SC
people are very well known, and I trust they are not spammers either.
Nothing prevents 3rd parties to go through the list of companies, shown
in the petition website, to pick out disgruntled Verisign clients, and
get them to switch to non-Verisign products. They'd have to pick up the
phone or do their own research to find their contact details, though,
as they don't get emails from me! :)
In case folks don't know, I don't really sell to retail customers (I
deal with just a few large companies, mostly financial, usually via
word of mouth with little advertising). Thus, one can be assured that I
don't have the desire or the motivation to do any mass marketing to
individual retail domain holders, etc. Most of the domains in my
OpenSRS reseller account are my own, or for a handful of friends and
clients (i.e. like a specialized boutique).
Sincerely,
George Kirikos
http://www.kirikos.com/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Tue Oct 19 2004 - 23:37:47 EDT