ihreconsulting.com Forged Header Spam

[AussieDave]

We all know or least should be aware by now, our affiliate data (email/name/etc) is collected by AM's and is either taken to their next employer or, worse, it's being shared/traded/sold.

Yet in direct contrast to programs or AM's telling us WHO the "hacker" is, they ALL default to using the "privacy policies" excuse...

If I receive an email from anyone I don't know; who addresses me by name; where my email address is not associated to a domain registration, then it's spam. In this case, the email domain is wild-carded on my mail-servers ignore list. By default I also block free email addresses

In 2014 I started getting hounded by ihreconsulting.com

I blacklisted them on the mailer-server. Maybe other affiliates did the same. However today I received another spam from ihreconsulting.com, checked my whitelist and no entry from this domain. Checked the email headers and they are forged.

The spam was to promote casinovo.com, through the affiliate program Casi Partners, casipartners.com

Ran a couple of checks against hosting and other related connections and pulled up the following, associations, to ihreconsulting.com

• vivre-a-saint-pierre-azif.fr (seems this is the orginating email domain - Casi Partners uses Both English and French)
  
• herocreative.co.uk
• openbet.com

I don't know who is responsible for this spam but who ever it is, stop it or I'll start really digging and make everything I find public. You've been warned!

 

[AussieDave]

I found the AM responsible for the SPAM!

Email received from: saskia.marinescu AT ihreconsulting.com
That domain is wild-carded on my mailer server's ignore list. The only way an email can bipass that is to forge the headers or send it from a different email account BUT make it look like it's coming from saskia.marinescu AT ihreconsulting.com

That's not very professional and imho any program or affiliate manager who does this, does it for a specific reason - to hide the true identity of the sender.


About Saskia:
Saskia Marinescu comes from within the industry with a background spanning 6 years. Previous positions have been held at Brightshare, bwin.party and Betfair. Joining Ihre Consulting Saskia will be focused on Affiliate Management with special focus on the DACH-region. Being based out of Tel Aviv

ihreconsulting.com/2014/12/11/press-release-ihre-consulting-adds-affiliate-manager-consultancy-team/

I have no idea WHO Saskia is???

Or for that matter, how ihreconsulting.com came to obtain my name and email data???

 

[bonustreak]

Brightshare, bwin.party and Betfair well there ya go..... Seems he/she has plenty of shady experience!

 

[AussieDave]

Your spot on there BonusStreak
Add Tel Aviv to that mix and it spells a lot things that affiliates should avoid...

BTW I just sent a courtesy mailer, via the ihreconsulting.com website, informing them to this thread. Lets see if they post a reply to my questions!

 

[justred]

Affiliate marketing companies buy / borrow affiliate lists. NEw staff bring lists with them. It's just a reality of our industry.

I don't mind being informed about new casinos / programs. It's spam, but one in X messages are useful.

 

[AussieDave]

It's spam, but one in X messages are useful.

Maybe you misunderstood the reason for commencing this thread.

I'm NOT asking affiliates for their feedback, it was to alert & publicaly announce, this marketing group (lose term), is spamming & forging headers too.

If your OK with getting spammed, that's your choice BUT it's not mine.
Maybe if you had 30+ sites, which receive over 500 spams a day, you'd realise, spam like this is a BIG waste of MY time.

Not to mention, I asked them to remove my details from their database. That fell on deaf-ears!

 

[casinonewbie]

These guys don't quite understand how much damage they do to themselves with this sort of stuff. Why would you want to use a middle man anyway, i figure what ever "special deal" you would get from them is only false economy in the long run.

 

[Kadabra]

I am ok with AM contacting. However don't see any good reason for AM to forge the header. They are not a mailer that trying to get some innocent player. Plain useless.

Bet4you, out of curiosity, what email address she used?

 

[Kadabra]

P.S. I know I am in minority hear, but i completely understand that AM that moves from company to company will probably contact the affiliates he/she worked with. Of course i completely condemn trading lists or anything of that kind, but you can't expect an AM that worked with affiliate A - to erase his name from his memory and not contact him again...
Of course there is a way to do it - spamming and forging headers is probably not it...

 

[IhreConsulting]

Bet4You, thank you for your post and your email to our company we received today. As justred mentioned we have new staff coming on board and have over 50 years combined in the industry so we are aware of a LOT of affiliates and have a LOT of contacts and relationships. You must be aware after your years in the industry that when people move around, relationships also move with them. There isn’t anything dodgy in that - its the nature of business. We use many methods to find new affiliates and build new relationships as all companies in this industry do.

With regards to forging - I don’t understand how we are hiding our domain or forging the way we do things? I personally wouldn’t even know how to do that and since I am the “webmaster", so I can assure you that isn’t the case. If you have contacted us in the past to remove you from the mailing list, we would of done so, but I don’t remember seeing anything from you. Which email address did you send it to? If you would like to send me a copy I would happily look through my emails and see if I missed it, since I keep every email which comes into the system.

One thing I don’t appreciate is a personal attack on one of our members of staff. Saskia is born and raised in Germany and is now based in Tel Aviv, correct. She has nothing but an impeccable reputation in this industry. She is hard working, honest and from what we can see up until now hasn’t had a bad word said about her. The companies she has worked for in the past have their own reputations, but can you define someone by the companies they worked in?!

There are other responses on this thread, which I respect. I haven’t responded to each comment since Bet4You wanted a direct response to his comments, however anyone is free to contact me to discuss any concerns or why we have been working with thousands of affiliates over the last 5 years and the benefit they have found to work with us.

 

[AussieDave]

Hi Ed, (or do you prefer Edward?),

Thanks for dropping by and putting forward your story.

One thing I don’t appreciate is a personal attack on one of our members of staff

To save me repeating myelf, please refer to my reply, to your following quote.

She has nothing but an impeccable reputation in this industry

Trying to defend/justify and paint Saskia (your employee) into a person with integrity, is a moot point.

The fact is, she was not only busted spamming BUT also hiding/camouflaging the senders true identity in the mail headers, most probably to avoid detection. Slice and dice that how you like. However where I come from, we have a name for that... It's called being sneaky. It's an action which aligns itself to the MO of "spammers".

The companies she has worked for in the past have their own reputations, but can you define someone by the companies they worked in?!

Hmmm...

• All of the companies Saskia (your employee) has worked for (Brightshare, bwin.party and Betfair), have a history of spamming and other questionable ethics.
  
• Your company (ihreconsulting.com) also spams [1], [2], [3].

Given the two (2) points above and references, it wouldn't be unreasonable for anyone to surmise... In the six (6) years Saskia has been employed as an Affiliate Manager in online gaming, sending unsolicited emails instead of being frowned upon and discouraged by all these Companies, spamming is embraced but worse encouraged.

Quoted from another thread about ihreconsulting spamming.
Ironically the comments made by Vladi are surpringly suited here, in response, to your post Ed... just sayin

It was not good to acquire a list of contacts and spam them in the first place, so please don't act high and mighty like in your reply above. You may not think of yourselves as spammers but the minute you sent me an unsolicited email (one of many now) to an address that I never gave you, you became by definition a spammer. And when you start spamming people you should expect at a minimum that it will make some of them angry.

In your above post Ed, you failed to tell me, how your Company et al, aquired my emails and personal data? I'll take it that you don't know. I'll conclude, given you do spam, it's highly feasable, you Company et al, buys/trades/swaps/sells email data lists. Yet another modus operadi of a spammer... just saying (again).

[1] - https://www.affiliateguarddog.com/community/threads/stupid-email-from-ihre-consulting-wtf.7344/
[2] - www.affiliateguarddog.com/community/threads/casinoroom-spam.8211/
[3] - Couldn't located a privacy policy statement, acceptable use policy & or T&C's. No spam policy either. And no usual cookies notification which is blantently picular, for a Company's office located in the EU (Stockholm).


Cheers

Dave

PS The email address I used to contact you last night, as well as the fastmail.com.au address located in [2], has received spam. I trust you will NOW make sure, ALL my details along with ALL associated emails are removed from you NETWORK; DATABASE(S); DATA STORAGE(S); AND WHERE EVER ELSE MY INFORMATION/DATA IS HELD. DO NOT SPAM ME AGAIN.

 

[Guard Dog]

I, personally, think this could be a MUCH more professional conversation.

 

[AussieDave]

I, personally, think this could be a MUCH more professional conversation.

A professional approach would also entail a "company" removing a person's data/email when requested to do so - especially when that person's information was not provided by double optin, to the aforementioned company et al. Sadly that request fell on deaf ears and was ignored. Nothing professional about that.

Under the circumstance I believe my stance on this, is warranted.

Though, I have taken your opinion on board

 

[Guard Dog]

I simply meant on all accounts. I think we can more easily resolve issues if we *all* go at things differently. I'm seeing conversations at AGD take a bad turn and just not liking any of it. It is very frustrating, in fact, and has me considering shutting down the forums for a bit.

 

[edgarf76]

I personally have been staying away from the forums. It seems like the same conversation using the same approach without getting results people want. My two cents and not arguing over it

 

[AussieDave]

I think we can more easily resolve issues if we *all* go at things differently.

It seems like the same conversation using the same approach without getting results people want.

I agree with both you guys

Can't speak for anyone else here, so in my own personal cases, I've tried the "soft", almost passive approach. However 9 times out of 10, where does that get me? In most cases, I'm blown-off with entire gambits of fake excuses, broken promises and ultimately played for a chump (sucker).

It's just not this industry either, it's everywhere (online and in our cities, towns, neighbourhoods ), these days.

My wife and I often ask ourselves these questions (maybe you do too):

• What has happened to Good Ol' Fashioned Respect?
• What happened to people being accountable for their own actions?
  
• Why is a promise (someone's word), NOT stand for anything, anymore?
• What's with ALL this road rage?
• Why are these hateful and abusive comment messages being posted to YouTube/FB etc?

Here's a couple of examples of people/businesses behaving extemely badly toward my wife and I (in our country town pop 10,000) since Oct 2014.

Our ducted reverse cycle air-con, heating went on the blink. Three (3) return visits, charged for labour and parts on all visits. The final visit, another service rep says, "someone reversed to the polarity on the motor. That's why when you turn the individual zone points "off", they are actually beingh turned "on".

We complain to the business and are promosed a refund. Two (2) month later no cheque. I phone and blown off with BS. In the end we both go to the office and demanded payment. Things got heated. We got out cheque BUT we were not welcome back at that business again. Why? We did nothing wrong! ALL we expected was a job to be completed properly!

Similar story with an electrical company, hire to re-wire the house. Instead of just waiting for the seven (7) day account invoice; we were going away for a few days, I handed them a bank-cheque for $4,400AUD the day they finished. My wife arrives home later that night, with no carport light. We check the property and it's a mess.

Strewn (sharp) wire off-cuts everwhere (fortunately our dog was at boarding kennels), lights which worked with switch A before, now worked with switch B. Our original art-deco (1940's) hallway light and surround missing (gone)... Least to say, I had to go registered a domain name similar to this electrical company and throw up ALL the issues.

ONLY when that site outranked them in Google, did they have a change of mind and wanted to fix their f#ck-ups.

Should I or anyone else have to go through this type of BS? NO!

However these type of stories flood the internet, people getting ripped-off, scammed etc etc. Not only online but in their every day lives.

Reiterating...
It's just not this industry either, it's everywhere (online and in our cities, towns, neighbourhoods ), these days.

It seems more often that not, people are feeling let down, lied to, disapointed, frustrated and disrespected. Add in ALL the presures in modern day living and everyone has a breaking point, a moment when they snap and this usually manifests itself into anger. Why? Because they are so damn frustrated with not being heard & or being disrespected!

In closing, the only solution I see is for everyone (including myself), to take a look out how we behave and if one can, try to be a little less volitile. It's not an easy task master but...nothing changes if nothing changes, right?

 

[AussieDave]

Getting back to OUR casino industry....

Received a promo from a casino today. The promo title : 8333% Bonus

Thank you for registering an account with us. You have yet to use your cashier so, we thought we would entice you with 8,334% extra on making your first deposit.

(this was in BOLD text)
Simply put: If you add $30, we will add $2,500.

---------

There is nothing simple about it. This mailer (promo) has NO terms; No bonus rules; No wagering information, listed/contained on this mailer AND does NOT link to any either. Well ALL know "Simply put: If you add $30, we will add $2,500", is not a truthful representation of this casino bonus. Yet we ALL allow these places to continue to distribute these TYPE of misleading bonus offers.

And when a players win and they don't get paid and get bent-out-of-shape because of it. What do these casinos DO? They blame the player!

Maybe instead of distributing these "enticing" bonus offers, void of their bonus caveats, how about either adding links to these bonus terms/conditions and specifically including any and all additional caveats... No I guess that wouldn't work, would it... Because most players would realise then and there, this bonus isn't what it's been painted as!

 

[Insider]

Dave, i can't understand why you are upset. Only because you got an e-mail from a company where e-mail address you blocked before?

Sorry i don't know you as person and you don't know me but with all respect i find it a bit exaggerated that we have a discussion here about an e-mail you received what you don't want.

We all know about how this business work, sometimes good sometimes bad. But we all are sitting in the same boat. We are also not agreed with all what in this business happen but we can make differences.

Was something wrong in this e-mail ? Why you don't show us the e-mail you got that we can decide by ourself whether is anything wrong or not.

I believe there was nothing wrong and she couldn't know or have any influence about the e-mails which are blocked or not. She has used only the databank from "Ihre Consulting".

Every day we all have to do with many e-mails and some of them are spam, that's true.

Saskia only try what all other managers also trying, to get new partners, there is nothing wrong, it's their work.

So, without these managers we can't do anything. Ok, some are good and some are better and some will nerves you but this isn't really a reason to open a barrel here.

What i can say is, that Saskia Marinescu is an integrity and loyalty manager and it doesn't matter at which companies she works before.

I know her personally and know that she respect it if an affiliate say, sorry no interest to work with you or your company. She would never nerve you, because she know and have the understanding what affiliates want or don't like, she accept this but to ask for should be allowed.

She really hasn't deserve that one comes around and complains about.

I agree with Ed's post and find it cool that the boss stands behind his employees.

Please try to understand my post correct, because i have nothing against you.

Maybe you have once again the chance thinking about, because i guess that Saskia is already shocked about your post.

Cheers

 

[AussieDave]

Hi insider,

Maybe I need to keep this really simple and straight forward.

EG - A person comes to my from door, trying to sell or promote something:

• I listen to the sales pitch, then say, sorry but I'm not interest.
• A month or so goes by and the same company turns up at my door again.
• I specifically tell them (again), I'm not interested and please remove my details from you house-calling list.
  
• A month or two later, I answer the door-bell and it's Company xyz.
  
• Aftert they leave, I place a sign on my front gate, saying... Company xyz is not welcome on my property.
• However a few months later, I answer the door bell and it's company xyz, again but this time they send another person.

Transpose this over to my email address and my personal data.

• I never gave ihreconsulting.com my email/personal data nor did ihreconsulting.com request it;
• Not interested/asking my house-details are removed - transposes to the email I sent ihreconsulting.com asking for my details to be removed from their database.
  
• The notice on my front gate - transposes to where I've placed a wild-card blocking again ihreconsulting.com on my mail-server ignore list.
• Again company xyz makes contact - Ihreconsulting.com contacts me again. This time they hide/spoof their true identity with different domain email.

Trying to invalidate this sheer disregard, for my rights, to my privacy, not to mention, my choose not to be spammed.

But then trying and justify these actions as something "anyone in this business should just accept", is total BS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamming

Electronic spamming is the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited messages (spam), especially advertising

That's why Countries have SPAM LAWS!

 

[IhreConsulting]

Bet4You, This is Claire.

I totally understand all of your comments, and feel about the world the same as you do. Good people get screwed over all the time. It actually happens to me constantly. About 6 months ago, someone crashes their car outside our house, through our garden wall. We are still waiting for her insurance to pay out for a wall which is still broken and we have had to pay our insurance excess to chase it all up. We pay for around £3000 for fencing and garden gates to secure our garden and make it safe for the kids. We now can't lock our gates because they have "dropped" and misaligned. No response from the fencing company. Our wedding actually got cancelled 3 days before the wedding date, 5 years ago due to the Iclandic Volcanic Ash (those at the Amsterdam Affiliate Conference will remember that time well). We had to fight tooth and nail for months to get our insurance to pay out to cover some (not even all) of the costs. I always say bad stuff happens to just us all the time, but its obviously not - loads of people get screwed over.

Can you send me copies of your emails where you requested to be removed. I personally deal with all the requests which come in to unsubscribe or be removed. Some affiliates we work with on a daily basis don't want the newsletter, but do want to hear from us personally, so I try my very best to monitor every request which comes in and take care of it accordingly. It has never been our intention to offend or upset anyone, and from your comments I do understand that we have, so please accept our sincere apologies. If I have missed it, then I personally apologise to you for that.

As for hiding our true identity, I have absolutely no idea how we can do this. If you can forward me (claire.wellard@ihreconsulting.com) how this comes over on email, I will look at it, but I can assure you that as far as I am aware we are sending everything via the IhreConsulting.com domain.

As Insider mentioned, Saskia was very upset about your comments, and took it as a personal attack at her. She is new to the company since December and has been working extremely hard for us to do a great job, so this came as a blow to her to hear these negative comments against her.

I would love to clear this up and move on. I don't want Andy to be disheartened about his forum which he has worked extremely hard to build and nurture. I don't want to offend you or upset you further and I can assure you, that you have now been removed from our system and won't ever be contacted again, but I would appreciate you sending me the email you are referring to with regards to hiding our identity as I would like to look into it and deal with it accordingly. My email address is above.

Thanks, Claire