Yes, you read the title correctly: I’m here to share a positive experience I had with some unsolicited e-mail.

Last night I recieved this piece of spam:

Voodoo Machine

Click Here

Experience feelings of inebriation, psychedelic visuals, extreme relaxation, floating sensations, intense endorphin releases, all culminating in a relaxed yet alert euphoric state. It’s a completely electronic drug-like experience and it’s entirely safe, legal, and beneficial in so many fantastic ways!

-Enhance Sexual Performance
-Non-Addictive Narcotic Substitute
-Relaxation and Relief from Stress
-Relieve Depression and Anxiety
-Fight Insomnia

Click Here

This, however wasn’t just any random spam product…it was one I actually had some familiarity with. No, I haven’t ever tried it (nor am I totally sure I’d want to) but the Voodoo Magick Box had been featured in the November 2002 issue of Lotus, which I worked on. One of my tasks at Lotus was wrassling up high resolution images of products listed in The Checklist, Lotus’ product placement page, on which the Voodoo box was featured. I had exchanged e-mails with a nice guy at the company named Nathan Wosnack, and he’d sent some images of the product.

So here I was, getting spam for a product I’d only recently helped to promote in the pages of a magazine. That fucking sucked.

I was pissed, and went through my e-mail archives to get Nathan’s e-mail, and sent him a message explaining my frustration, and urging, “I hope you (or whoever makes marketing decisions for Voodoo) will reconsider the company’s direct marketing techniques.”

I heard back from Nathan this morning. He apologized for the inconvenience, and pointed out that the website that the spam linked to (voodoomachine.bz) wasn’t the same as the company site (voodoomachine.com), and that I’d been spammed by one of their affiliates.

He went on to explain,

VoodooMachine.com allow’s [sic] anyone to become a webmaster. Unfortunately that meant that they got a lot of people who were abusing their terms of conditions.

Webmasters should have followed term #6:
Spamming is not allowed. The Webmasters of VoodooMachine.com do not promote spamming in any way. We will withhold all funds, and delete accounts of persons believed to be involved in spamming or abusing the Voodoo Machine system. Spamming includes: newsgroups, unwanted e-mail, ICQ, IRC, or any other forms of promotion we consider unlawful.

Nathan then directed me to forward the spam in question to his abuse department.

A couple hours later, I received this e-mail from him:

I spoke to the staff this morning and they said the user has been removed
and all funds made have been seized. The customers who purchased through
him will, however still be receiving their products.

Simply stated, that spammer sent mail to the wrong woman, and now his whole resale business has been shut down…and his money confiscated for breaching his terms of conditions! CACKLE!!

As Nathan said, “This is yet another victory for us, the Internet citizens.” AMEN!