I’ve been spammed again by Aerial Impressions Aerial Photography.  The last round of spam I had to deal with from them was in February 2010. Gmail’s spam filtering is normally pretty good but it seems that our old spamming nemesis Aerial Impressions seems to still somehow come through.

When Aerial Impressions sent me an unsolicited email last year I reported the offence to the Department of Internal Affairs Anti-spam unit as a breach of the Unsolicited Messages Act.  I provided a written and signed statement to the effect but was not called to the stand to testify in person.  As far as I am aware the company providering spamming services (Image Marketing Group) was prosecuted and fined for numerous illegal spam email campaigns it has run.

It’s the same old email! They still appear to be including a non-functioning opt-out facility as I have obviously reappeared in their email database for further spam.  Remember, an organisation must have your explicit or inferred consent to send you material advertising their products.  If they don’t have it, they are breaking the law!

The email received today originated from an Australian email address (aerialimpressions@westnet.com.au), so perhaps NZ spam laws do not have enough teeth to deal with this particular offender.

They give the appearance that they are a large international company.  I can see that they saturate six out of the first ten searches on Google for “Aerial Impressions” with separate websites under .co.nz, .com, and .co.uk domains.  A .com.au address surfaces on the subsequent page of results.  In the search results i’ve also spotted a very old acquaintance Mark Foster who has delved a bit further in to tracking down who these people are via technical means.

His original blog post on the matter is here.

I see that Aerial Impressions don’t seem to volunteer a lot of concrete information.  I believe they are using a Virtual PO Box and physical address provided by the company Private Box (a company I have had less then pleasant dealings with in the past).  This Virtual PO Box and office service seems to support customers who would wish to hide the location of their real offices.

If I wanted to run a company and conceal my real address but still want to make it look open by providing a physical location to potential customers, this Private Box service would be a perfect front.  On the other hand, I can see many valid and legitimate reasons for using such a service.  It’s just doesn’t look like it in on the surface here.

Have you received any spam from Aerial Impressions?

Consumer Magazine is published both in electronic and magazine form by Consumer NZ, an independent, non-profit organisation established in 1959. One of the many areas that the Consumer Magazine covers is Internet Service Providers. Each year they conduct a survey to get an insight into their readers perceptions of the best and worst Internet providers in New Zealand. I’ve sumarised the results below.

The Consumer Magazine surveyed and rated the following areas; Customer satisfaction, mobile broadband, customer service, and reliability.

Customer Satisfaction

Seventeen ISP’s were included in the customer satisfaction survey.  The top provider was Wellington-based ISP Actrix with 98% of survey respondents reporting overall performance of good or very good.  Actrix was followed by PlaNet, Inspire and ICONZ (all 98% rating overall performance good or very good)  in that order.

The worst three providers were Telecom, Vodafone, and Compass.  Only 54% of Compass customers rated their overall performance as satisfactory.

Mobile Broadband

Three mobile broadband providers were included in this survey.  They were 2degrees, Telecom, and Vodafone.  2degrees was rated the best with 78% of all respondents rating good or very good.  Telecom was second with 63%, followed by Vodafone at 53%.

Customer Service

The customer service survey was split in to five differing categories.  Customer service was rated on the following components; In-home setup, phone help - billing, Phone help – technical, and online help.

The following ISP’s were rated better then average in all four categories; Actrix, Inspire, Maxnet, Snap, and Worldexchange.  The worst overall performers in this category were; Telecom Xtra and Vodafone.

Reliability

Consumer Magazine rated ISP reliability based on the following categories; Failed connection attempts (dial-up), disconnections/dropouts, slower then expected speeds, and unexpected charges for excess usage.

Actrix was the only provider to be rated better then average in all four categories.  They were followed by Inspire and Snap having three out of four categories rated as better then average.  Note: For most providers, Consumer received less then 30 responses for the dial-up category.  Only sufficient data was received for 5 of all internet providers.  The trailing providers in this report were; Telecom Xtra, Vodafone, Woosh, and Farmside.

Link: Consumer Report Internet Providers

Everybody hates spam.  It clogs up your mailbox like a blocked drainpipe.  I have had my share of spam advertising russian brides, replica watches, penis enlargers, and lists of Doctors in the United States for sale.  Hear my story about some locally generated spam in New Zealand.

Up until now this spam has all originated mainly from China and the United States.  Even before New Zealand introduced the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act in 2007 my email box was generally free of locally generated spam.

I was surprised to receive in my email today an email from Printa NZ, a New Zealand based company offering various print options.  I did not sign up for this newsletter.  

The email included the following paragraphs:

Printa Ltd would like to ask for your permission to email you no more than once a month a special offer on one of our print, promotional or pen selections..

DO NOT CONTACT ME AGAIN:  Please go to the bottom of this page and click on unsubsribe and type in the email address that this email was sent to – You will be deleted immediately from our contact list and we would like to apologise for any inconvenience.

To clarify two very important points:

• An organisation can not send you an unsolicited email which asks permission to send you further communication

• An organisation must have your prior acceptance before sending email communications to you.  

Prior acceptance could be given by signing a document authorising the communication or by otherwise inferring consent.  For example, if you provide a business card to the organisation with your email address on it you may be providing interred consent to further emails being sent to you.  Both these situations show a prior connection between parties.

Further arrogance is shown in the email from Printa NZ in their attempt to require people to make use of an “OPT-OUT” facility to stop receiving further promotional material from them.  If you do not OPT-OUT of their email list it appears that Printa NZ thinks it is perfectly acceptable to continue barraging you with spam.  

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO STAY ON OUR CONTACT LIST:  You need do nothing and a email will be sent out to you in a month or two letting you know our next special.

The OPT-OUT facility is a requirement under the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 and is intended as an option for subscribers that have already authorised the communication by opting in.

I am not a lawyer and this is not to be considered legal advise.

If you would like to report receiving spam from Printa NZ or any other New Zealand based organisation, you  can report the breach to the Department of Internal Affairs via their website.

Check out the response I received from Deb at Printa NZ after the break.

(more…)

Over the next 18 months Microsoft is expected to cut anywhere between 2000 and 5000 positions in Research and Development, Legal, Human Resources, and Information Technology.  A total of 1,400 positions are due to be cut immediately.

Microsoft posted a lower than expected profit of $US4.17 billion ($NZ8 billion) in its second quarter ended December 31.

Revenue at its Windows client division fell 8% due to delayed corporate upgrades of PCs and cannibalisation of consumer notebook sales by netbooks installed with Windows XP.

Microsoft Corp’s stock fell nearly 12 percent at one point to its lowest level since 1998.

As at 30 September 2008, Microsoft employed 94,286 staff worldwide, with 56,654 based in the United States.  If 5000 jobs were to be cut this would equate to 5.3% of the total Microsoft workforce.

Microsoft employs around 150 staff in New Zealand, who are not expected to be part of the job cuts.

Source: Microsoft, National Business Review, Computerworld