08.11.2006

CPA triggers email chaos

On Friday David Smith of the UK's Construction Plant hire Association sent out an important bulletin to members covering drivers hours.

Unfortunately the CPA server had been infiltrated by a worm and the email was sent to everyone repeatedly. Some members received the email and its attachment almost 2,000 times.

As soon as it discovered the problem the CPA shut down its server and sent a letter of apology to all on the list.

That was Monday and as of this morning it was still working on the problem. Some of the worst affected members had their own servers shut down by the attack, costing a considerable sum to have their systems purged.

As if this unfortunate incident was not bad enough, the mailing included the full list of recipients email addresses. A few members having received the email thought it would be a neat idea to take advantage of the problem and decided to send their own spam emails promoting their companies to the members on the list!

In doing so they also picked up the worm and their introductory emails began perpetuating themselves.

Members are still receiving these self promoting emails from the following:

Nigel Lewis of 4urecruitment.co.uk
Kailey Simpson of Oades Plant Limited
Peter Scott of Scott bros Limited
Joel Cox of Chiltern Bore Limited

The rest of those who “jumped on the bandwagon” seem to have now managed to stop their email onslaught, sadly a well respected access company was among those who thought that this was a good marketing idea.

If you know any of those above please tell them to shut down and clean out their servers.

Vertikal Comment

The sending of unsolicited promotional emails – spam – is illegal, and along with “e-casting”, as more sophisticated spam is often labled or dressed up, generally creates a great deal more neagitivity than benefit.

Certainly a percent or two of recipients to an e-cast might respond, but the other 98 percent of recipients are likely to become hostile to your company. It might be cheap… it might seem clever but it is the worst form of junk mail..

In this case though, How these people thought that a CPA member who has just received 2,000 copies of the same email and had to call in an IT specialist,would be receptive to their unsolicited promotional emails goodness knows.