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Localism Leaks Email Addresses= SPAM

Kinda disappointed.

Today I got a spam that was sent to an email address ONLY given to ActiveRain.com. So when I got the spam to that address (which is why each account I sign up for has a different email address) I knew there was a leak.

ActiveRain was, for me, the posterchild for how to keep email addresses secure and away from spammers. I constantly point to how they use a webform to hide the agent's email address away from spammers.

But then I find out that Localism, the sister site to Activerain, decided not to use this system. THey instead decided to have a clickable link (see example) to the email address (yes they use some javascript to hide it from crawlers). But now spammers pay companies in India $2 an hour to manually troll cites for local targetted email addresses. The spam I got was for a night club partying company in the DC area.

I hope Activerain will go back to their webform ways.

Have I said recently how much I hate spam?

Frank

Here is the company that did the spamming: PartyDigest.com

Posted by FRANK LL0SA- Northern Virginia Broker .:. FranklyRealty.com on 04/24/2009 12:20 AM

Comments (4)

Spam in the Sales Strategies / Tactics Channel

realtor spam

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4 Comments on Localism Leaks Email Addresses= SPAM

APR

I'm with you. I hate spam and I received an email this week from someone saying they "liked" me and they wanted to get to know me better. I just had to write them back. It's so annoying!

APR

Frank,

Still, most agents want people to be able to email them. Being a "secret agent" makes no sense. So "hiding" someone's email addrss from "the public" is not usually a good thing...for real estate agents and companies.

Activerain (vs Localism) uses a webbased form to contact the agent.

The same "click to email" but instead of an email address that can be cultivated by spammers (such as recently being added to a DC party hotline) and resold to 100 lists, it is a web based form that sends the email to the agent without exposing the email address (ie can't be added to a DC party hotline list).

More secure.

Same ability to contact a listing agent.

No secret agents.

Less spam.

Activerain/Localism is working on fixing this by the way.

Agents who like getting added to mass email lists are always free to put their email address in plain text or as a link elsewhere on their blog.

Frank