recent spam from jewishmusic.com

[Ari Davidow <ari...>]

Chevre,

An overzealous marketing organization hired by Tara Music apparently sent out 
spam in Tara's name to several people, and did so, in part, using fake servers. 

Several people have complained to me, and (inexplicable to me) I have actually 
been cc:d on a number of the spams.

I have spoken to Velvel Pasternak, and ascertained the following:

1. His intent, and his instructions, were to send announcements to "opt in" 
recipients--people who had visited the Tara Music website (www.taramusic.com, 
www.jewishmusic.com) and asked to be notified of sales.

2. No recipients were garnered from the jewish-music subscriber list which is, 
and which has been for a couple of years (as I was reminded just today, and 
then had to research back) unavailable, even to list members, specifically to 
prevent it being used for this purpose.

3. One person has reported a rise in "jewish" spam to me. On query, I have been 
unable to confirm other subscribers to the list who have noted a similar rise, 
but my sample was small (< 10). It did include people who have posted to the 
list, and some who have only lurked.

4. I therefore conclude that there has been no recent leak of the mailing list 
subscriber e-mails, and that sometimes, even for organizations I generally 
respect--Tara Music being a prime example--things go awry. 

5. It is, and will continue to be okay, I hope, for Tara, Hatikva, and other 
vendors and individuals to infrequently let the list know of commercial 
activity (items for sale, concerts, etc.) that would be of specific interest to 
subscribers of a =Jewish Music= mailing list.

6. For goodness sake, if you post to the list, commercially or not ESCHEW HTML 
or any encoding other than ASCII. Check your e-mail right now and make sure 
that it only sends out "plain text." Ditto for enclosures, including "vcf" 
calling card signatures.

I hope this answers any questions, and is an iteration of policies that seem 
fair and reasonable,

Sincerely,
ari


Ari Davidow
ari (at) ivritype(dot)com
list owner, jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
the klezmer shack: http://www.klezmershack.com/

---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+