Takahashi contact

[Volans]

G'day All,

Does anyone know of an email contact for the Takahashi company? One of their Australian agents spammed a huge number of astronomically related businesses today with a 2 meg attachment to the email. The emails were sent to inapropriate addresses such as "info@...." or "enquiries@..." (in our case it was sent to the booking office address), resulting in many of those businesses having clogged email boxes. When the attachment eventually opened it was an advert for Takahashi 'scopes.

I wish to email the Takahashi company and advise them of the behaviour of this agent. Pleae note: I have nothing at all against Takahashi, I simply want to teach this spammer a lesson.

Many thanks in advance,

Peter.

[Dennis]

Here is the link to the Takahashi website http://www.takahashijapan.com/

As expected, it is mostly in Japanese. I had a look around and could not find any means of contacting them on-line.

My understanding from the Yahoo Tak newsgroup is that Takahashi appear not to want any direct contact with the public, so instead, they rely on their agents in various countries to provide after sales service.

Cheers

Dennis

[rogerg]

If it truely is an unsolicited email (you didn't give authority to receive it - didn't "opt in" to their list) then they should be reported for violating the spam act (assuming they are australian based):

http://www.aba.gov.au/contentreg/complaints/internet/SPAM.shtml

Report them.

Roger.

[Robert_T]

There is only one agent for Takahashi in Australia and New Zealand and that's AEC in Cleve, SA. I'm sure if it emanated from there it was not intended to cause distress or discomfort. Rather than going straight for the official slapdown, why not simply contact them and explain the difficulties this caused, and - assuming it did come from them - simply ask that they dont do this again in the future.

e-mail address for AEC is aecclaudio@ozemail.com.au

cheers,

[Miaplacidus]

Sorry, can't agree. 2MB of unaddressed and unsolicited email? Give em hell!

[rogerg]

I'm in 2 minds about it. Working in IT I see how much effort (time & $$) some companies have to go to in order to do the right thing by spam regulations. So I get really annoyed at those who cut the corners and don't have to go through the same, it's unfair as the competitors and the receipients both suffer because of an illegal action.

But, if it was completely by accident and the person had good intentions, well, everyone makes mistakes.

I guess while I'd be keen to report a spammer, I'd not be against first checking (somehow) if it was actually an accident or a fully intentional unsolicited email, then re-assess what they deserve.

Roger.

[Volans]

Robert, you are quite correct in assuming that this came from AEC.

The email came with the following subject line, "Takahashi Professional Standard Observatory Instruments" and comprised wholey and soley of a one page Word document attachment. This document had high resolution images embedded within it and the only text to the document was detailing instruments, contact details for AEC and to "call for a price".

Because the emailer used CC instead of BC it means that everyone can see everyone else's addresses. There were 41 receipients of this email including Flinders Uni (sent to central records dept.), Uni of NSW (sent to the marketing dept.), Monash (sent to inquiries address), Uni of WA (sent to general enquiries address), Grove Creek Obs (sent to bookings address), the secretary of ASNSW, Arkaroola Village Resort (sent to reservations address) and also to us at the Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium via the bookings email address.

This is the reply that Grove Creek sent out:

"How DARE YOU send a 2.09MG attachment to all of us! You silly FOOL! You
didn't even send it to the correct email, you scanned our web site for our
tour enquiry email box. That is SPAM in its worst way possible - plus, you
have exposed all the people below, their private emails. You are now banned
from our domain and I am most angry - it took us 20mins to gain access to
our email, due to this.
You can be assured that the Grove Creek Observatory will NEVER buy anything
from your company as a result and I hope the other people you emailed to,
will follow our example.
You silly person!"

There has been no apology from AEC.

To me, this is a clear case of SPAM. At no point have we ever joined AEC's emailing list and considering we already have 3 telescopes in our small Obs. then we are hardly likely to want an expensive Takahashi 'scope therefore we would not be contacting AEC for a price list.

Thanks rogerg for the link to the Australian anti-spamming authority, I will be using it!

Thanks Dennis for the Takahashi link. I too could not find a contact for them which is a shame as I don't think Takahashi would be too thrilled to learn what their Australian/New Zealand rep is doing.

Peter.

[matt]

Serve it up .... big time!:mad2:

[Dennis]

When I first joined the "internet community", as a newbie I made a few netiquette transgressions which were (mostly) kindly pointed out to me, although some less forgiving (jaded?) regulars blasted me.

I guess if the intent was innocent, with a complete lack of awareness of what 2M attachments do to an in-box, I would try to educate the originator as a first course of action. It still occasionally happens where I work, in spite of our IT department’s valiant education programme!

Some users of e-mail, newsgroups and the WWW just do not know how these systems work “under the hood” and so can make some dire mistakes. I have purchased goods from AEC and in my dealings with them, not once did I detect an attitude that would indicate a desire to cause this immense frustration that the recipients must have felt, in order to selfishly advertise their offerings.

At face value, it looks like a naïve ignorance of e-systems?

Just my 2c worth.

Cheers

Dennis

[MiG]

That could explain the size of the e-mail and the CC, but not the addresses it was sent to. It's hard to feel sorry for them when there has been no apology.

[janoskiss]

Whether it's utter disrespect or gross incompetence, they deserve a clip on the ear.

[Volans]

Unfortunately, the clip on the ear will have to wait. I have run into a problem with telling the anti-spam authority.

The email was sent to our booking officer's address. She then forwarded the email to me. She then deleted the email from her machine.

The authority want the "header" information included in the complaint to accurately identify the spammer. Now I'm not too sure what this information looks like but when I bring up the properties of the forwarded email it just keeps mentioning the booking officer's address as the sender.

So if anyone can tell me what "header" information looks like, I'd be grateful. I will also contact the Brisbane City Council's IT dept. and ask them about it because all of this came through via the Council's system.

Peter.

[Dennis]

My sympathy is for the recipients of the 2M attachments and the distress it caused them and their operations, not for AEC. I am just speculating that the AEC I have dealt with does not fit the profile of a professional spammer, although they will surely have to live with the consequences of their actions, as no one else is to blame.

Maybe the person who sent the e-mail just manually looked up the addresses from the target recipient’s websites and naively sent the unsolicited e-mail in complete ignorance of the chaos it would cause?

This is all conjecture of course, but a scenario that could be possible?

Sadly, I have seen people do some quite silly things with MS Office applications, just because they can so easily and so readily do so, with a few simple clicks of a mouse. Yet, they can remain completely unaware of just how badly chosen their actions were and the consequences, because they just do not know how computers and these “friendly” applications work below the GUI.

As for their lack of apology – yes it does further condemn them in my book.

Cheers

Dennis

[janoskiss]

In most mail clients (don't know about outlook though) you can view the entire header. In thunderbird its View->Headers->All. Or you can save an email to a file and then view that file in an ordinary text editor (not a word processor!). It will look something like the attached pic.