Re: Emerald Passport Help

> Bill-
> You are Wrong about EPI not doing anything about spammers. You might want
> to do a little bit more investigating about EPI's spamming practices
> before stating such things about the EPI business.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

EPI has carefully cut a loophole for their spammers, so they can post a decent-appearing policy, but not really do anything about the majority of their spammers. Read on.

> I know of an EPI distributor that was busted by EPI for spamming.

Can you name the perp? I have at least ten of them in my data base of spammers, and they're about to appear on a web site to expose them.

> They
> have a very strict policy against spammers and I have copied and pasted
> the policy right here, directly from epassportinc.com :

I note it's not on their main page, but a couple of levels deep at http://epassportinc.com/info/spam.cfm but I've seen that a long time ago.

> The Company has a zero tolerance policy regarding spamming by its members.

For their own substandard definition of spam. That's their problem. It was also a problem for the DHS Club, and got them blacklisted.

> Be advised that spamming activity of any kind is grounds for immediate
> termination of the distributorship. The company will provide a platform to
> answer complaints relating to e-mail activity and concerned Members will
> be given a chance to address these complaints (admin@epibiz.com).

The industry-standard reporting address is "abuse" at the domain involved. Any professional operation would know that and conform to the standard. Not having an abuse address is grounds for being included in one particular blocklist, since it's usually evidence that the operation wants to not receive many complaints.

Why not an abuse address at epassportinc.com?

More importantly, the non-standard reporting address you mention is not posted anywhere obvious. Visit http://www.epibiz.com/index.html and you will see no link to the no-spam policy. No easy way for the outside world to discover what this non-standard address is.

Please tell me how the typical spam victim would even know about admin@epibiz.com if its only mention is on an internal page?

> In the
> event the distributor is caught spamming he/she will be removed from the
> program. EPI has a ZERO TOLERANCE spam policy. Anyone spamming with the
> EPI name (in any way) or referring to any of our web sites may be
> immediately terminated, losing their position. If you violate this policy
> and it causes damage or loss to our servers, or causes one (or more) of
> our web sites to be interrupted from normal service, you will be held
> liable for damages and loss of business.

And that's the unacceptable loophole. Using the EPI name or URL is what they call spam.

They carefully exclude the tactic that their members are using, which even has a name: "two-stage spam." It's where the member spams a harvested or purchased list of "opportunity seekers" and tells them there's this fantastic opportunity but they have to reply (or visit a web site) to get more information. When the spam victim replies or visits that site, the spammer calls that action some kind of "opt-in" as if it forgives the previous spamming activity. Not so. As they say, homey don't play 'dat game no more.

Network owners are not fooled by this tactic. If allowed to continue, it will certainly result in the destruction of email as a useful medium just like spam that contains the name of the opportunity.

Investigators are replying to those emails and visiting the web sites (sometimes called capture or landing pages) to find out who the spammer is who sent the original email. Some spammers call this "entrapment", but it's a time-honored investigative technique. The spam offense has ALREADY HAPPENED - so the sting is run to find out who was behind it.

All legitimate operations forbid their members from running two-stage spam, yet EPI tells their members it's OK.

See the problem?

> Spam/spamming definition:
> · Sending any e-mail with the EPI name, or any of our web site addresses,
> to anyone that has not requested this information from you first.

But it's OK to spam the heck out of people to induce them to request the information from you?

> · Sending any e-mail with the EPI name or any of our web site addresses,
> to any type of "Safe List" or through any type of "Safe
> List" service.

But it's OK to do it if you conceal the EPI name?

> · Sending any e-mail with the EPI name or any of our web site addresses,
> to any type of "lead" or "prospect" before you have
> received a request for more info from

But how do you get the lead or prospect to request more info? Spam them?

> · Sending any e-mail with the EPI name or any of our web site addresses,
> as part of a confirmation/thank you letter as a result of a posting to a
> classified ad site or a FFA (Free For All Links) site.

But as long as you keep the EPI name out of it for one more step, it's OK?

> As long as the EPI or any of our web site addresses, are not mentioned in
> any way, or are not in any way linked to EPI, you may pursue any
> advertising that you wish, or e-mail anything that you wish, that is
> strictly your business.

BUZZZZZZTTTTT! Wrong answer! This encourages two-stage spam in unlimited quantity. As I said, we're no longer so easily fooled. If it wasn't for EPI, the spammer would have no incentive to spam. Two-stage spammers are just as much of a problem as single-stage spammers, and are trivially traced back to being EPI members.

For a discussion of two-stage spam and how it got DHS Club in trouble, read my page here: http://www.theclubbuiltonspam.com/toler.html

> If you are pursuing some type of opt-in advertising, there is always a
> chance that you will still generate a complaint. Design your ads to get
> the prospect to respond for more information. At that point, the spam
> issue is not relevant, as long as you can produce a copy of the specific
> request to refute any complaints that we might receive.

Specifically enables two-stage spam. The spam issue is indeed relevant if the chain of evidence involves EPI at any stage, not just the initial email violation.

See the problem yet?

> If you spam, even
> if EPI name, products or services are not directly involved in it but it
> still resulted in a complaint, you will:

> Have your account terminated immediately without refund and notice.
> Charged a $500 USD cleanup fee.
> Be reported to your own provider by us as a spammer, where they will
> presumably terminate your account as well.
> Be reported to authorities.

But they've previously defined two-stage spam to be "not spam", so this section would never be enforced.

> Their policy can't get any clearer than that.

I agree, and it's seriously and fatally flawed. Until and unless they enforce a reasonable policy against two-stage spam, EPI has declared its intention to be a rogue operation, not willing to police their members and effectively prohibit spamming.