In 2003, many unsolicited bulk email advertising messages or "spam" were sent by roving.com on behalf of Synchronicity Productions toward mailboxes at rhyolite.com, including but not only on
Those examples were captured in dccm logdir files, because a history of sending unsolicited bulk email had made mail from roving.com unwelcome at rhyolite.com
On June 24, 20003, Alvin Apuan apparently sent a message to covad.com and spamcop.net with a copy to vjs@rhyolite.com. The substance of his explanation for the spam was a variation of the fabled "Hacker X" story:
My hunch is that since the business is highly competetive in the industry of club promotions, we suspect that our competitors are asking people to subscribe to our email newsletter and then complain after for spamming to close our business down. Or we may have hired people or staff that aims to ruin our business.
I sent a response to covad.com but not Mr. Apuan following my policy of avoiding contact with unsolicited bulk email advertisers. I wrote in part
I have no idea why Mr. Apuan sent a copy his message to me. I am particularly surprised because Mr. Apuan's message seems to be inconsistent with the nature of the messages I have seen over a period of months advertising his http://www.spclubs.com Besides the fact that the unsolicited bulk messags has been advertising his organization, they (plural) have come via bulk mail service vendor Roving Software. I do not know exactly how Roving Software operates, but I suspect that Mr. Apuan's organization provided the addresses in question to Roving Software. I am not sure whether Mr. Apuan's statements about spam accusations are consistent with the NANAS record. See http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22spclubs.%2Bcom%22+group%3A*sightings I have not seen any unsolicited bulk mail advertising Mr. Apuan's organization recently. Based on a private message from Margaret Olson of Roving Software in response to messages from me to the ASRG mailing list that mentioned spam from Roving Software, I would not be surprised if Roving Software pre-emptively removed all addresses at domains that she guessed might harbor a spam trap or other address of mine.
On December 6, 2006, Mr. Apuan sent an objection to the presence of (some of?) his domain names in the Rhyolite Software list of unwelcome domain names. Besides a lot of apparently irrelevant text and a copy of his 2003 message to Covad and Spamcop, he wrote:
My name is Alvin Apuan of Synchronicity Productions. It was brought to my attention only today that our domains were listed as Unwanted Domains. I am not sure how this went about, but our promotion business started in 1999, and has been inactivated in April 2004. We did have an incident regarding spamming and was brought to my attention around June 2003. Please see emails attached if this is related to your incident. We brought this incident to SpamCop for them to conduct an investigation, and it was found that it is not in our doing. <<Attention SpamCop>> <<FW: Attention SpamCop>> <<Re: Attention SpamCop>> <<Re: Attention SpamCop>> Through the course of our Club Promotion business, we suspect that our competitors have tried very hard in taking us out of business through Spam issues but we managed to get by until April 2004 to where we decided to convert the company to a Corporation. It took us almost 2.5 yrs. in bringing in the right partners for the business, as well as the conversion of the company to a Corporation. We are now finalizing our documents but is now pending due to this clearance issue. My corporate partners are very concerned and would like me to clear this matter first before we sign the Corporation Docs. Please let me know if the emails attached has something to do with the incident we had with your company. And if not, please advise us the process on how we can take our name out of the Unwanted Domain Listing. I really appreciate your help on this so we can move forward in Incorporating our company with new share holders. I look forward in your response.
On December 8, 2006, Mr. Apuan sent another objection to the presence of (some of?) his domain names in the Rhyolite Software list of unwelcome domain names. He included a copy of his message of December 6, 2006 and wrote
Just wanted to follow-up on this. Please advise what we could do to speed up the process. I really appreciate your cooperation and understanding.
In the hope of keeping future messages from Mr. Apuan out of my mailbox, I finally created this web page on December 8 and added his avnet.com address to the list of unwelcome domain names. I would rather not waste time on such things, but enough is enough.
In 2006 I am no more inclined to believe Mr. Apuan's story about evil hackers from competitors than I was in 2003. I still believe that Mr. Apuan contracted with Roving Software to send bulk mail advertising and included my email address in the list of targets. Because I had not asked for his advertising, it was unsolicited bulk email or spam. That makes email from him unwelcome at Rhyolite Software until and unless a user at rhyolite.com finds a reason to receive mail from him. Because no users of the rhyolite.com domain name are within 1000 miles of the San Francisco Bay Area, that is unlikely to happen soon.
Answers to frequently asked questions about the list of unwelcome domains, can be found the list of objections to the list.
Contact vjs@rhyolite.com but not this spam trap.
