Bluehornet Options

[winchester73]

Why is Bluehornet, an eMarketing company, sending emails titled ""Gift the Gift of Ad-Aware SE" with the message "You have received this message because you have registered to get information about Lavasoft and its products"?

When I subscribed to your update email service, did I give you consent to use my email in this manner?

@urizen ...

[Corrine]

I know I didn't provide my consent. What really disgusted me was the wording of the unsubscribe acknowledgment specifically specifying the opt-out to "all marketing e-mail subscriptions".

{If you already deleted the email, see here.}

@Winchester, perhaps this explains Urizen's lack of involvement:

Nicolas Stark also remains active with Lavasoft, now as a partner in the company that is run by Ann-Christine Åkerlund.

http://www.lavasoft.com/company/about_lavasoft/

[HJThis]

Hey,You guy's

May you and family have a great safe one this year and every year.

Gogo

[LS Michael]

Why is Bluehornet, an eMarketing company, sending emails titled ""Gift the Gift of Ad-Aware SE" with the message "You have received this message because you have registered to get information about Lavasoft and its products"?

When I subscribed to your update email service, did I give you consent to use my email in this manner?

@urizen ...

Winchester73 and Corrine -

You can be assured that your e-mails have not been 'turned over' to a 3rd party marketing firm to do with as they please. BlueHornet is simply the mailing engine required to send our monthly newsletter out to the nearly 1 million people on the mailing list now. Lavasoft owns the list and will always own the list, thus the sender as editor@lavasoft.com (the same e-mail that is published for our newsletter).

Thanks, however, for your thread both here and at dslreports.

Happy holidays to you and yours.

Michael

[Corrine]

Hi, Michael. Merry Christmas to you and yours as well!

Thanks for the update. It would have been a good idea to update the Lavasoft Privacy Policy as nowhere is it stated that subscribers email addresses will be given to another party (other than Element5 when dealing with a purchase). Besides, BlueHornet is a bit more than a mailing engine. According to their own description of their business, they are an "eMarketing Suite". Thus, the likely reason all the links in the email are a dr.bluehornet.com addresses like the following:

http://dr.bluehornet.com/ct/ct.php?t=37875...7B4107C62843E8C

(BTW, we teach users to mouse over links to detect phishing scams. If the link doesn't show the sender's name/address, submit the email to PIRT@castlecops.com and delete the email.)

Having now gone to their website and seen the list of partners, since I don't have the time nor inclination to check out the privacy policy of BlueHornet as well as the rest of their partners, I've unsubscribed. There are too many complications involved for a simple newsletter or update notice.

[Corrine]

I almost forgot -- Hi, Gogo! Merry Christmas to you and your family as well. Give your Mom a hug from me.

[HJThis]

Hi,Corrine

I will thank you

Gogo

[winchester73]

Winchester73 and Corrine -

You can be assured that your e-mails have not been 'turned over' to a 3rd party marketing firm to do with as they please. BlueHornet is simply the mailing engine required to send our monthly newsletter out to the nearly 1 million people on the mailing list now. Lavasoft owns the list and will always own the list, thus the sender as editor@lavasoft.com (the same e-mail that is published for our newsletter).

Thanks, however, for your thread both here and at dslreports.

Happy holidays to you and yours.

Michael

Michael ... thanks for the explanation.

I asked about this because of their press release the week before your email campaign.

MINNEAPOLIS, Dec. 12, 2006 — BlueHornet Networks, Inc., a leading provider of e-mail marketing solutions and subsidiary of Digital River, Inc. (NASDAQ: DRIV), today introduced its SureSend™ e-mail deliverability enhancement platform. The SureSend platform is designed to help e-mail marketers achieve better results from e-mail campaigns by improving their inbox delivery rates. SureSend also helps online marketers comply with the rapidly changing criteria used by Internet Service Providers to determine which e-mails they deliver, filter or block.

Source: http://www.bluehornet.com/site/press_release/ (dated 12/12)

Complete release: http://www.bluehornet.com/site/press_release/#


Getting an email from BlueHornet 'out of the blue' caught my attention. I generally dislike getting third party emails ...

I'm confident you understand ...

[winchester73]

@Gogo ...

Thanks mate. I wish your family nothing but the best in the new year. Your dad was a special person, and I think about him, especially when at this site.

Thanks for your work on the various support forums.

[LS Michael]

Hello again Corrine and Winchester73 (and HJThis) -

Yes, we certainly do appreciate your concerns and really appreciate the opportunity to have these kinds of discussions. It also helps us to learn how to make improvements that will continue to help others - because if you have concerns about something, we're pretty sure that others are as well.

So, you've actually already got half of the picture. BlueHornet is owned by Digital River. The other half of the picture is that Digital River is also the owner of element5 (who you already know is our e-retail partner). So, officially, our retail partner is now Digitial River. Thus, the reason that they are also now handling the mailing with the BlueHornet system.

Your feedback about the links in the e-mail and the press releases, etc., was very valuable - and I'll make sure that those discussions are taken and acted upon.

Corrine, I'm sorry to hear that you've unsubscribed. But, I hope that you will still check in on the website and view the newsletter there. http://www.lavasoft.com/company/newsletter.php

As the company continues to grow, there are certainly issues like these that will come up now and then. Thanks for your feedback which helps us to address them sooner rather than later.

Cheers.
Michael

[winchester73]

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I suspect you are correct that others might have been wondering about this as well ... as you know, the anti-spyware community is fairly close-knit and shares things across all of the support forums.

Since you are looking for feedback, my concerns here were really quite simple. The link in the email was specifically to their address (not hidden behind HTML) and it showed a different address than 'appeared' on the display. It had the appearance of having been sent by a third party ... the BlueHornet logo and the phony sign-up date made me think at first sight that it was a phish.

Please give urizen my apologies.