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February 25, 2010

Why Netprospex Data is Worthless

So, in this down economy, I've seen the amount of spam mail received here spike - and most of it is obviously being sent to addresses from purchased lists. Here are some sample Subject lines from some of this stuff:

Sept. 2, 2009: The Rich Media Marketer
Act Now and Save $100 on a Job Posting (Monster.com)
Patient Condition* (419/phish)
Change-Growth-Strategic Refocusing of Executive Talent (Barron/Carlington)
Are you prepared? (from my former colo, but they bought the address)
Linked-In Essentials for Executives - teleseminar - Two Days Left
Your keyword banners advertising demo - Place billboard on top of Google
Information Systems Opportunities (NETSHARE invite)
Conference call request (Thoughbot)
IT Consultants Onsite (hispeedstaffing.com)
Hi Steve I have a question for you (SEO Experts Inc.)
Evaluation of CRM solution (birlasoft.com)
2010 budget planning (openmetrik.com)
Business meeting invitation with Hesketh.com (Oxagile)
Complimentary Subscription Notification (businesswatchnetwork.com)
Reminder about your invitation from Epro Tech (via LinkedIn)
Current and Future EMC Celerra Customers (Graham Magnetics)
Limited Time Offer - Buy Two Job Postings and Save $135 (Monster.com)
FREE Webcast Invitation - "Thought Leadership Roundtable Webcast
        - Data Leakage" - CPE Credits - Register Now! (WhiteHatWorld.com)
The Post Office Now Brings Cake for the Holidays (postcake.com)

This month has included Victoria's Secret Valentine's day spam, energy tax credits for window replacement, lots of recruiter/staffing companies, lead management software, network services, the usual Indian "request for meeting" outsourcing crap, diploma mill stuff, capital advisors, business phone solutions, WAN management software demos, wireless telecom services, Liberty Direct insurance, medical billing degrees, "Green IT Economic Summit" invite, Six Sigma workshops at Dartmouth, Sharepoint developer outsourcing, cheap auto insurance, free (actually "complementary", >snicker<) cruise, Prudential Financial insurance, Blue Star Infotech, "e-billboards" SEO spam, Singlesnet, satellite TV, Ziff Davis Enterprise spam, Dish Network, new cars, home warranties, term life insurance, more Dish Network, more auto insurance, and tax refund services.

several of which even contained references to the address of our office from 2000-2005 (we've moved twice since then).

How do I know the lists are purchased? Because the address that has seen nearly a fifth of the spam received here this month:

  • has never been used to send mail
  • has never been used to sign up for any mailing list
  • is an obvious e-pended creation from names and initials
  • has been seen in prospecting email from people who admitted they bought it
  • is actually used by ESPs to vet imported lists because of these facts
  • is associated with my informal name and ostensible title
  • is the target of mail containing the address of our old offices (from which we moved in March 2005)

I'd seen a fair bit of mail to that address from people I asked about where they bought the list, and a couple of them even admitted to buying the list (both from Lead411). So I was already aware that there are services out there that:

  • make up addresses
  • make up some information to go along with them
  • don't verify the stuff that might actually be true
  • and then sell them to idiots

I just didn't know the scope of the problem until I read an article recently mentioning Netprospex. The usual silly marketer mentality was in full evidence (read: "of course it's okay to email people you don't know, just don't do it in bulk!") and I figured I'd better check out whether or not Netprospex was any "better" than Lead411.

There's a way to search for business by name, so I searched. I got three results, two of which were applicable to my company. The first, rated at "94% accuracy", and which claimed to have been "verified" (that's the CEO's tagline for Netprospex, remember) on October 23, 2009, was the name of our former CFO, who left the company altogether in early 2007. The second, rated at "61% accuracy", was for me, ostensibly the "Chief Technology Officer" of our tiny Web dev shop, and claimed to have been "verified" August 24, 2009. I didn't feel like spending $1.50 to download my own contact information, especially since they have us classified as part of the "Packaged Software Industry" (we build Web applications for not-for-profits, FWIW, you be the judge) but I suspect the address they have is incorrect.

You can click through any contact, however, so I did - and got a popup showing our area code, the first digits of our former office's street address (we moved in June of 2008). Laughing uncontrollably at the train wreck that is Netprospex now, I clicked through the "94% accurate" and recently "verified" contact for our CFO - yes, they have the two-offices-ago address for her.

Oh, and despite all the obvious effort they've gone through to collect and maintain this information about our company's officers, they don't have a record for our CEO and founder, after whom the company is named.

In other words, Netprospex data is basically nothing more than comically embellished bullshit. Which you can pay for!

Posted by schampeo at February 25, 2010 5:56 PM

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