Re: very interesting article on refi spam

[Ian FREISLICH <if...@hetzner.co.za>]

Jeff Chan wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 27, 2004, 12:16:24 AM, Justin Mason wrote:
> > http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,118164,pg,1,RSS,RSS,00.asp
> 
> >   'In an effort to understand the sordid world of mortgage spam, I
> >   responded to several of the many such messages that flood my inbox. I
> >   discovered that clicking and responding to these messages led to
> >   callbacks from well-known lenders like Ameriquest and Quicken Loans
> >   (formerly owned by Intuit, but now a separate firm), as well as dozens
> >   of smaller legitimate companies.
> 
> >   What's more, most of these reputable firms had no idea they were tied to
> >   this growing influx of mortgage spam. When I followed the spam trail, I
> >   found the tracks sometimes led to legitimate lenders.'
> 
> > --j.
> 
> They're probably third party or affiliate referrals.  Presumably
> the referrers get some kind of finder's fee (i.e. money) for
> bringing the prospective business in.  The actual lenders
> probably don't even know they have scumbags feeding them leads.
> 
> What should happen is that the lenders should get informed
> about their referrers being bad so they can stop payments
> to them.  Reminding the lenders that most of the spammers
> are committing felonies in sending their spam will probably
> do the trick.  Few legitimate companies want to be associated
> with crime or criminals.

	'Stephen Messer, LinkShare chairman and CEO, says his network
	does not have a problem with rogue affiliates... "The problem
	of spam is bigger than LinkShare," Messer says. He blames
	the scourge of mortgage spam on lax enforcement of existing
	antispam and fraud laws.'

That's like watching a gang of crooks break into your neighbour's
house, not calling the police and then lamenting that crime is
such a problem and that the police do nothing the catch the bad
guys.  There can be no enforcement without reports and it follows
(IMHO) that this company and chairman are as a consequence as rotten
as the people with whom they do business.  A fish rots from the
head, so to speak.

Ian

--
Ian Freislich