Re: Spammer named 'Ashley J. Sands' who harvested everyone's email from djangopeople.net

On 05/15/2010 11:18 PM, AshleyS wrote:
> Hi David,
>
> I guess now that you are convinced that I am a scammer there must
> not be much I could say to convince you otherwise.
>
> Previously I have contacted all of the Australian Django freelancers
> and asked them if they had any work. I didn't scrape them, I
> manually went through the 146 Australians of them and found 46
> freelancers. 30% of the freelancers responded to me and were all
> happy to check out my website and consider subcontracting to me.
>
> I then decided to contact all of the American Django people. But the
> idea of clicking through 1.5K of them didn't sound appealing. So I
> decided to scrap them. I didn't scrape the entire djangopeople.net
> website, only the US Django people. This was my first and last
> scraping experience.

I'm miffed that you didn't scrape and "spam" the Canadians, too. :)

> Before I ran my python script to scrap the US people,

"Scrape", not "scrap", by the way. :)

> I wondered
> whether what I was doing was unethical. I was spamming many people
> but I certainly wasn't a scammer.

I wouldn't consider this spamming. People put their contact information
on djangopeople.net presumably with the aim of being contacted. If
someone is so uptight that you contacting him to ask for work causes him
to go off the deep end and write a long-winded and nasty email to a
public mailing list effectively asking everyone to ostracize you, it
says more about him than it does about you. That person really should
not have his contact information on a public web site if he is that
sensitive about being contacted. Moreover, that person really needs to
read Dale Carnegie's classic "How to Win Friends and Influence People"
and apply the principles therein.

Having said that, Ashley, in marketing, what you did is known as "the
shotgun approach". It's a low-yield and not particularly effective way
of marketing.

> How can someone scam a Django
> freelancer by asking for work? I'm not asking for money to free
> millions of dollars locked away in overseas accounts. I was asking to
> to have the opportunity to work. The only way someone would pay me is
> if I did a good job for them, thus there is no way for me to scam
> them.
>
> I convinced myself that it wasn't unethical because I did not have
> evil intent and that it was in the best interest of some of the
> recipients. Many Australian django users thanked me for contacting
> them. This was surprising to me since I was thankful that they read
> my email.

While I wouldn't do it, I don't view what you did as unethical at all.
If you don't ask, you don't get.

> I sent my email via Gmail, so: I dont understand what you mean by
> 1). About 2), somebody sent me an email like this to me about a job
> and thats where I learnt it. 4) is not true. ashley.j.sands@gmail.com
> is my email and my name is Ashley James Sands. 6) I work from home as
> a freelancer so since no clients ever meet me there, I don't list
> it. 7) I agree with that this is pathetic, hence why I was so
> desperate to scrape and spam.

You didn't explain away #5, "The site listed has WhoisGuard protecting
the whois information", which is supposed to "prove" that you're a
spammer, so I'll do it for you. There are many legitimate domains
protected by WhoisGuard. Pointing to this as "proof" that the person
behind an email from such a domain "is a leech" is a bit much and
totally uncalled for.

> If I was a scammer, I would of dumped this email account and moved
> on. I wouldn't be posting to this Google group forum trying to
> recover my badly damaged reputation. The only way I can prove to you
> I am not a scammer, is by asking you to ask yourself "What is his
> motive?". I am just trying to get work, not scam money. A scammer
> never hangs around to defend a false/stolen alias.
>
> Also 7) is a great point to prove that I am real. If I were a
> scammer, I wouldn't put something as pathetic as 7) on my website. I
> would of listed many fake projects that did many great and wonderful
> things. So since 7) is so pathetic and crap, it is proof that it is
> real.

While upgrading a Django site from 0.96 to 1.1x isn't rocket science, it
isn't "pathetic" or "crap". Some experience is better than no experience.

> I apologize to you David, everyone I spammed (~100 US Djangoers) and
> the Django community for spamming those 100 email addresses. I have
> learnt my lesson and I won't do it again.
>
> This is actually quite embarrassing experience since I have made
> such a stupid newbie mistake.
>
> Is there any sort of community service I can do for the Django
> community to attempt to make up for my stupid mistake? I don't want
> to be forever labelled as an evil scammer and I am willing to give
> back to the Django community as an attempt to recover my reputation.
>
> So here's the chance for somebody in the Django community to get
> free work, open source or not.

If you're going to work for free, do it for an open source project or a
charity. Hang around on IRC and help people. Blog, answer questions on
this list, build sites, and have fun. The work will follow.

> Once again I must say that I am sorry, Ashley

Don't be so hard on yourself. It's not a big deal.

By the way, I'm <http://djangopeople.net/cilkay/>.
--
Regards,

Clifford Ilkay
Dinamis
1419-3266 Yonge St.
Toronto, ON
Canada M4N 3P6

<http://dinamis.com>
+1 416-410-3326

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