As people may or may not know, there was a hack at DirectTrack this year, and someone took and sold over 500,000 email addresses in batches to the industry. Those who also may not know, I am the person who caught the guy and turned him in when he tried to sell that database to Affiliate.com and Azoogle.
As someone pointed out, they were emailed from names that were specific to other networks. I have spoken to one of the networks involved and am concerned that the list was not just their affiliates, but from a list they bought from someone, as this list has been floating around the industry for some time. I am also going to be asking the two affiliate networks to immediately email their affiliates and inform them of this relationship.
On top, the confirmation list will be completely and totally deleted in full. As Jared @ Firelink already pointed out, he has been a reader of my publications from some time, this is where the vast majority of the email addresses came from, my publications for the last 12 years. I apologize for the few people in the screen shot below, but many, many people in my list have been reading it fro as long as 10 years, and some are still reading what used to be my daily mails to people about my life, love, death and the industry. You can see some people have been there since my import into 2005.
Again, I apologize and this will never happen again.
First of all, my name is Mike, not Jared - and my company is Firelead. What the fuck is a Firelink? :angryfire:
Don't try calling here again, I don't want to talk to you. I have read some of your other publications via their respective websites, I have never subscribed via email to ANY of your publications. You used an email that I created specifically for Affiliate.com and got caught red handed.
Making up an story saying you were the one who caught the people who hacked the emails, and then implying somehow that they leaked into your email list is just a poor excuse.
Just stop being douchy - you are calling out your fellow marketers and pointing the finger at "fraud" for your own personal gain. It's only making you look like the next Yu. It's a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.