Spam: Invitation to join Ryze.com (2004-02-24)

On 2004-02-24 I received an invitation from a person I never heard of to join Ryze.com, a service I had never heard of either. Apparently it is a business networking tool created by engineers who wrote Napster, the file sharing tool. A quick search for phrases used in the invitation mail showed that someone had tried to invite several open source software mailing lists to join this service, including the "debian-devel" mailing list. This typically happens when someone uses address harvesting software to scan websites for any and all email addresses mentioned in them and then uses software to send bulk email to all those addresses. In this case however, it appears the invitation comes from the Ryze.com server. Does that mean that Ryze itself is spamming to get lots of subscribers quickly? I sure would like to know.

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Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 18:13:00 -0500
Message-Id: <200402232313.i1NND0pi002151@ryze.com>
To: joewein@pobox.com
Subject: personal invite -- Ryze business networking
From: Sholom Sandalow` <lastyear@aol.com>




   
Sholom has invited you to join Sholom's personal 
and private network on Ryze.

To view the invite, click on:

  http://www.ryze.com/in/gmFeGdeqPgpJ5RM0SY


Ryze is a networking service that helps
people grow their careers, businesses and lives.

  * meet entrepreneurs, CEOs and other neat people 
     through your existing friends and contacts

  * get expert advice and contacts through special
     networks focused on your interests and industry

  * get your own networking-oriented home page

  * keep in touch with your friends and keep track
     of their birthdays


  http://www.ryze.com/in/gmFeGdeqPgpJ5RM0SY
 

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