Condé Nast Publications publishes "Gourmet" magazine. Judging by the ads the readership is classically bourgeois. So why do they generate so much spam? It's amazing -- every email address I've ever had gets spam from Conde Nast, usually about "Gourmet". Unsubscribe attempts always fail.
It's easy to eliminate -- I just block "condenastpubs.com". Still, it's weird. I suspect a good portion of the middle class doesn't mind getting spam from Gourmet ...
Update 10/14/07: Judging from a helpful comment, this appears to be a business decision by Conde Nast, not a technical error or a fluke. I think there's a strong case to be made for blacklisting the condenast.com domain.
Incidentally, as of today a Google search on "conde nast spam" has this blog post as the top hit. I suspect someone from Conde Nast is going to read this. They can add their comments below, i promise I'll publish them. They can't email me, since I've blacklisted their domain.
Update 1/18/07: I got another Gourmet magazine spam -- but the domain was erol.com. Turns out this is not a Gourmet spam after all; it's a phishing email. I suspect even Conde Nast hasn't fallen that far. It's a measure of how low they have fallen, however, that phishers are now riding their spammy coattails.
I subscribe to three publications from Conde Nast and I've noticed tons of their spam, too. I foolishly signed up to receive e-mail updates from Style.com once, and after about a month, tired of their e-mails. I decided to unsubscribe. Or so I thought.
ReplyDeleteE-mails KEPT coming for weeks after I had "unsubscribed." Because I have three of their magazines (this means my account number is the same across the board), I went to the global Conde Nast newsletter subscription page and selected that all communications be stopped...and yet, the Style.com mail KEPT coming. I also now have the same problem with some of their partner websites/affiliates like Epicurious.
They also sold my information to local businesses and charities who began sending coupon and event solicitations to my home address.
I was very disappointed with this behavior. I will never renew my subscriptions once they are done. Undoubtedly, Conde Nast will continue spamming me, hence my resolving to delete my e-mail address after the subscriptions complete.
Years later, and they're still at it!
ReplyDeleteSpam works.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen their spam for a while though, my firewall of gmail filters deletes everything from all the domain variations they use.