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January 12, 2005

Years ago I read what was then a classic article in the Harvard Business Review. I forget the title now, but its author helped readers examine their companies to uncover what their real businesses were. My description makes it sound simplistic, but the article had numerous examples of how major businesses failed to understand what their true missions were, and got swallowed by companies that had figured it out. Like the way railroads thought they were in the railroad business, rather than the transportation business—and let airlines own the skies.

What brought this up was a message in my "spam suspects" bin (surprise!). The Subject: line (for a change) accurately indicated the subject:

Online Dating Service

There's no need to bore you with the details. This spammer, though, didn't try to disguise the destination URL for all his hot online dating action. No, the link was plain as day...to a domain whose name contained the words "cheap" and "mortgage" (along with some other characters).

The domain is hosted in China, and the info in the registration (minted all of six days ago) looks bogus to me. From what I can tell, there is no city on Earth named Kraczevic, and it certainly isn't in Zambia.

So, is this a case of a mortgage lead spammer trying his hand at online dating spamming? Or is it simply a confused online dating spammer? I doubt this guy needs the Business Review article. He knows his business. It's spamming. Whatever makes a buck through high volume, zombie relayed, forged header spamming.

Someone might want to send this guy an article on brand awareness.