mainsleazespam.com sleazers: DoubleClick

DoubleClick

       If there is any one of the Dot-Bomb Madness corporations that are more widely reviled in the Internet community of end users, I am not sure what it is. DoubleClick's practices over the past few years have engendered lawsuits, from the suit over their purchase of the ABACUS database and plans to use it to track individuals movements on the web, to the most recent class action suit filed against the company accusing it of using fake error messages to lure web users to their advertised sites. I personally have had the honor of having their CEO boy wonder Kevin take the time to compose a letter in response to a letter I wrote that was published in the Wall Street Journal at the time of the ABACUS debacle. Kevin's letter was quite threatening in tone, and Kevin carbon-copied it to the President of Indiana University, where I am employed. What a guy! What a company.
    I personally hope they implode into bankruptcy at their earliest convenience, and Kevin and his crew spend their retirement selling pencils and apples on some street corner on Wall Street.
    I run my own LAN and domain at home for my consulting and development work, and host this web site and others, and run my own DNS server within my LAN. DoubleClick has a special place in my DNS server, namely, Source of Authority records that route all traffic to the localhost address 127.0.0.1 for doubleclick.net. Meaning instead of their ads on web pages, I just see little red "X's". I don't feel any great sense of loss or deprivation.

True Mainsleaze. DoubleClick Complains About ISPs Blocking Email
    This from a company listed in multiple blocklists for repeat spamming.
    The New York online ad company said its clients' overall e-mail delivery rates were 88.8 percent in the first quarter, a slight increase from the previous quarter and up from 87.5 percent in the year-ago period. This marks the second straight quarter of modest improvement in deliverability for the company's e-mail clients.
    Blocked commercial e-mail remains a problem, Kirby said. Internet service providers are aggressively filtering e-mail as spam levels keep rising. Brightmail reports that spam grew from 58 percent of all e-mail at the end of 2003 to 64 percent last month.
         Direct Marketing News. June 2, 2004.
Read a little bit about DoubleClick and see a sample of blocks here.

    reuters.com. Wed Feb 25, 2004.
    Online profiling in which consumers' names are connected to their Internet habits to market products will become more prevalent as consumers trust Web sites more, Kevin Ryan, chief executive of Internet marketing company DoubleClick, said on Wednesday.
    DoubleClick's 1999 acquisition of direct marketer Abacus Direct was of particular concern for consumer groups worried about corporate abuse of customer profiling. It provided DoubleClick with the ability to combine data such as a person's name and address with information on the Web sites they visit and items they purchase.
         Online Profiling for Ads Seen Growing

SPEWS is a widely used blocklist, listing netblocks of unrelenting spam abuse and support.
Below: DoubleClick and Dartmail Listings in SPEWS (Spam Prevention Early Warning System)

	[This listing in SPEWS was as of March 25, 2004.]
	dartmail
	|--------------------
	1, 216.73.90.151, out15smtp1.ddc.dartmail.net
	1, 216.73.90.167, out16smtp7.ddc.dartmail.net
	1, 216.73.90.0/24, dartmail.net (doubleclick.net)
	1, 216.73.89.11, newsletter.mtvasiaawards.com
	1, 216.73.89.0/28, newsletter.mtvasiaawards.com (doubleclick.net)
	2, 216.73.89.0/24, newsletter.mtvasiaawards.com (doubleclick.net)
	2, 146.82.220.0/24, dartmail.net (doubleclick.net) (GLBX)
	0, 204.253.104.0/23, dartmail.net (doubleclick.net) (UUNet)

I found the following posted in news.admin.net-abuse.email Sept. 11, 2004. What do you do as a company when the whole Internet and most of its users hate what you do, and will take any action they can to prevent themselves from being assaulted by your business model? Warn your investors, apparently.

Buried deep in the boilerplate "Risks" section of Doubleclick's (DCLK) 10-Q
SEC filing of August 9, 2004 (and perhaps also in other of their filings)
is this delicious tidbit:

"If the delivery of Internet advertising on the Web, or the delivery of our
email messages, is limited or blocked, demand for our products and services
may decline.

      Our business may be adversely affected by the adoption by computer
users of technologies that harm the performance of our products and
services. For example, computer users may use software designed to filter
or prevent the delivery of emails or Internet advertising, including pop-up
and pop-under advertisements, or Internet browsers set to block the use of
cookies or prevent or impair the operation of other online tracking
technologies. We cannot assure you that the number of computer users who
employ these or other similar technologies will not increase, thereby
diminishing the efficacy of our products and services. In the event that
one or more of these technologies became more widely adopted by computer
users, demand for our products and services would decline.

      We also depend on our ability to deliver emails over the Internet
through Internet service providers and private networks. Internet service
providers are able to block messages from reaching their users and we do
not have agreements with any Internet service providers to deliver emails
to their customers. As a result, we could experience temporary or permanent
blockages of our delivery of emails to their customers, which would limit
the effectiveness of email marketing. Some Internet service providers also
use proprietary technologies to handle and deliver email. If Internet
service providers or private networks materially limit or block the
delivery of our emails, or if our technology fails to be compatible with
their email technologies, then our business, results of operations or
financial condition could be materially and adversely affected. In
addition, the effectiveness of email marketing may decrease as a result of
increased consumer resistance to email marketing in general. "