I just received spam mail from flex-data-services.com that reads:
The Flex-Data-Services.com spam alert article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
Hello,
We're trying to find out how to deliver you better service in the future.
If you have 30 seconds, we'd really appreciate it if you could follow the link below and answer several multiple choice questions. It really will take less than a minute and all responses will be kept completely confidential. This is a single time campaign and you won't receive any more mails from us.
http://www.flex-data-services.com/survey.php?campaign=CHANGED&sid=CHANGED
Thank you for your help!
FDS Team
(I've changed the campaign ID and sid in the URL above.)
You could be fooled for thinking that this was a legitimate email from Adobe, especially since it is signed "FDS Team". I almost was fooled into answering it until I saw that it was sent to my PayPal account's email address.
On the web site that it leads to, there's a questionnaire powered by a system called UCCASS.
This email is definitely spam and most definitely not sent by Adobe. I'm sure the folks at Adobe would be interested in finding out who is behind this questionnaire. At the very least, I'm sure that Flex is a trademark (and probably Flex Data Services too).
I'm definitely not filling this in and I'd urge you to be careful if you received a similar email.
Update: Here is public information for the registrant of the flex-data-services.com domain, based on a whois lookup:
Todor Kolev (todor@vip.bg)
none
Sofiya
Sofija,1000
BG
Tel. +359.1234567
This domain definitely doesn't belong to Adobe and I smell something fishy here.
Update: The registrant info is most likely fake as Todor Kolev is apparently a leading Bulgarian actor, and would you look at that phone number -- sheer genius! :) Funny how the person responsible for this didn't hide the fact that they're from Bulgaria, however (or, they're just that good!)
The Flex-Data-Services.com spam alert article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
Yeah I got one this morning but just deleted it.
Turns out that Todor just has the same name, and is in fact not quite fake :-) But just the same we’ve asked that he clarify the email to avoid confusion and have recommended that this approach may not be the best way to reach Flex developers.
Thanks Aral!!
Sorry for not being more inventive with signatures :). I just wanted to use something different than my personal name and I haven’t trying to confuse people to think this mail is from Adobe. If I wanted so I would sign with “Adobe” and everything will be clear :). As you see I’m not hiding. Everybody interested can look the domain info. Even my real mail is there :)
So sorry once again for this confusion. I’ll be happy if you remove this post from your blog, but if you don’t it’s OK. I desire it :)
Hi Todor,
The email was still sent in an unsolicited manner and signing it “FDS Team” is very misleading. Flex Data Services is an Adobe product. If I was to buy the domain name Flash-Player.com and sign a letter “Flash Player team”, it would be equally misleading.
I can’t believe that Adobe doesn’t have an issue with this but whether or not they take offense is their business. I personally do not appreciate spam.
We have no idea who you are and why you are collecting this data. Why should anyone answer this unsolicited email?