I wanted to give you and your readers a further update.

Dirk and I have discussed the situation and we cannot find any reason for this activity to be happening. Dirk has taken down the page which was promoted in the spam and replaced it with the reason why it was removed: http://www.dirkscrazyweek.com/previous.html

Also Dirk clearly states a zero tolerance to spam here: http://dirkscrazyweek.com/8/5/c/affiliates.php

Given how helpful Dirk has been in his replies, and how quickly he has come back to me, I want to publicly retract any suggestions (overt or implied) that he has instigated incorrect marketing techniques.

However, I should also state that my company keeps receiving these bounce backs, so something concerning is still happening.

Thank you to you, and your readers, for your time and attention to this matter.

Chris

I was hoping that Dirk was innocent, but it seems that he (or someone acting on his behalf) is up to his old tricks.

My server – or at least my domain – is being used to send emails that clearly promote Dirk’s business and where he certainly stands to gain.

It is my sincere hope that he is innocent. However, he has not published any contact information on his site (odd considering how easy it is to have VOIP and anonymous email accounts these days). He uses a domain protection service which is run by alleged criminals (why not just use Network Solutions for this?)

Anyway – I’m now dealing with a flood of bounce-backs from failed email addresses from the latest round of spamming.

Chris

Yes, spam is the common term used when describing unsolicited, commercial emails. If a spammer had hijacked Dirks server and sent out spam, it’s not very likely that these messages would have contained links to Dirks own products. I dont think the spam mails actually came from Dirks server, and that was not the point. The point was that the commercial spam message sent out, was promoting Dirks products – without any affiliate-id (hence, any sales made would have been credited to Dirk).

That plus the falsified headers in the mails – making innocent businesses receive a crapload of bounce-messages – is what made me ask for your opinion and comments

Could it possibly have been Dirk, and if not – why would someone else send out spam messages that only Dirk stands to profit from?

And I do appreciate you mentioning the fact that my mails haven’t contained the mandatory physical mailing address – that was one of the settings that disappeared when I changed mailing-system, server and domain – since I didn’t even know they weren’t :O

/Bjorn

In my definition a spammer is someone who sends email to people that haven’t subscribed to the email list and I can’t see any mention of this in your post above. I also don’t think you can call Dirk a spammer if someone else is hijacking his email server to send email.

To me a spammer sends unsolicited emails and don’t act according to the CAN-SPAM law, like having a physical address in the email and so on. According to that you Bjorn could be called a spammer since you don’t use all the required information in your emails. I’m not saying you are, but in one way of looking at it…

Regards,
Lennart