• rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
    30·
    8 hours ago

    I did something like this once.

    Predatory marketing company in the early 00’s sent my company a pretty wide spam.

    Hit about 2/3 of my staff, looked kind of official, like they we were asking them to buy their product.

    I said fuck that, I looked up their admin contact (back before domains by proxy) and demanded they remove us from the list.

    The admin reached back out and told me it was impossible.

    I poked around on their internet facing smtp server to figure out their naming convention, (those were the wild west days) sent a direct message to each of their c-staff, their HR department, and tossed in everyone@ (I hope that would have been blocked) and threatened to sign them up for every list I could get my hands on if I ever got a single report that they sent us another spam.

    The admin mailed me back 1 hour later asking me to please never send them mails again and that our domain was being removed from their list.

    • sevanEnglish
      6·
      7 hours ago

      I think the point of the post is that they PAID money to the data collectors to get data they themselves don’t want collected, thus becoming part of the problem. That said, I have done the free version of this multiple times with great success!

      1. Start finding names. This can be easy, but if you’re trying to deal with a subsidiary, a private company, or a massive conglomerate, it might be more difficult. You can start with things like CEO & COO. Search for things like VP/SVP/EVP/Head of Customer Service (or Customer Experience). Depending on the problem you’re trying to solve, you might look for more specific job titles like CIO, Technical Operations, Network Operations, Accounts, etc. Get several names for roles that might make sense.

      2. Find the email address format for the company. Common ones are first initial + last name, FirstName_LastName, etc.

      3. Send an email to all of the names you collected in the company’s email address format. Hopefully several of the names are reasonably distinct to make it likely you got the right person. Of course, it’s unlikely that the CEO is John_Smith3, they’re never going to take the numbered address. Be (somewhat) polite, be specific, be as brief as possible; ideally make a reasonable request to resolve the problem. You don’t want to come across as an unhinged lunatic and you don’t (necessarily) need to threaten any specific action. Just ask for their help resolving the problem.

      What happens next? They will likely forward the message to someone who has the ability to solve the problem. That person will contact you and make things happen that everyone else said was not possible. You do need to have reasonable expectations though. If you contact your ISP and tell them their outage cost you $1M in lost business, don’t expect much help. But if you tell them you were inappropriately charged $500 for equipment you returned 6 months ago, they’ll probably fix that for you.

      Helpful places to find names:

      • About section of the company website
      • News section of the company website
      • Wikipedia
      • LinkedIn
      • Quarterly Earnings reports
      • Industry-specific news sites
      • Google News search

      My biggest challenge has been with companies that constantly reorg, so I find a name in a news article from 2 years ago and they’ve already changed roles.

    • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      7·
      8 hours ago

      OSINT is the term you’re looking for.

      Edit: and this particular person was apparently talking about buying the data off signalhire.

      OSINT usually consists of collecting all of the publicly available data on a “target” (person or company usually) and correlating it all together to reveal things not explicitly public (or at least not all in one spot). “Open source” intelligence. Term is used by military, intelligence agencies, and pen-testers.

  • Hazor@lemmy.worldEnglish
    75·
    16 hours ago

    I wonder how long it would take for federal privacy laws to change if CEOs could never get a moment of peace because they had suddenly become the de facto customer support call center.

    • Nalivai@lemmy.worldEnglish
      18·
      12 hours ago

      New law: CEOs and their family are exempt from any and all forms of surveillance.
      Oh wait, it’s actually an old law.

  • FellowHuman@lemmy.worldEnglish
    82·
    18 hours ago

    The bit with contacting exec actualy works. Example:

    • Our app dosn’t work for 100 of users? -> can sit there for a month before we get to it, because it’s statisticaly insignificant number of users
    • One lady wrote CEO on LinkedIN? -> critical, must be done yestarday
    • OldWoodFrame@lemm.eeEnglish
      30·
      16 hours ago

      Extremely true. We are “customer obsessed” which is why thousands of users having an annoying screen popping up confusing them is prioritized below one lady who knows the CEO being unable to do an incredibly niche thing that we never said you could do on our platform.

  • LordGimp@lemm.eeEnglish
    38·
    16 hours ago

    I did this with Kaiser permanente and they were less than happy about it lmao sorry Jacob McCarty, you’re a piece of shit and deserve bad things.

  • Shardikprime@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    12 hours ago

    All you need to re read is the part where it says “it can backfire BADLY”

    Make of that what you will

    • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2·
      8 hours ago

      If you’re blocked from getting service, torching your account is probably your own next step.

      If they send you a cease and desist, you just use it for toilet paper and don’t re-contact. Torch your own account.

  • SatanClaus@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    40·
    17 hours ago

    Links to market places? Id love access to this info to help instill the same panic I have when my data is stolen to these fucks stealing and selling it

    • Katana314@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13·
      15 hours ago

      So, when this guy made his move, it was a rare case of American bipartisan agreement. Which makes me wonder: Could anyone get Trump to answer how he feels about Luigi?

      I get the sense any answer he gives would anger a lot of people that were formerly on his side.

      • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        8 hours ago

        I’d bet he’d say “why would I care, he should have had more protection”

        Not that I think he’s capable of reflections but likely:

        question -> reflects off ego and self experiences (he has a security team) -> filters through current status of how it’d affect him (it doesn’t).

  • Nate@programming.devEnglish
    11·
    16 hours ago

    Cashapp has terminated my account for less (honestly IDK why, can’t get a response and I’ve only had like 3 transactions on there from people in my contacts)