This morning one of it@cork‘s members forwarded us an email conversation he had with John Burns, Monster‘s Business Development Manager in Ireland. We were incredulous when we read it.
It started with an email from Monster’s John Burns to 189 recipients and CC’d to our member (!). Our member replied to John that this was spam and
…coming from Monster, most unprofessional. Worse, you exposed everyone’s email address to one another without their permission
Unbelievably for someone working in an online organisation, Monster’s John Burns seems to be unaware of the data protection legislation and responded to this saying:
These email addresses are part of a networking list from http://www.itcork.ie and are all available for everyone to see.
I do appreciate your concern chris, (i will keep my eye out for the bloggers!!!)
The legislation surrounding this kind of behaviour is very clear, data can only be used for the purposes for which it is obtained. We in it@cork were obviously naive in publishing the members directory (since taken offline) but that doesn’t confer on anyone permission to harvest that address list and spam them.
The Irish Data protection Commissioner takes a very dim view of this and has the power to levy fines of up to €3,000 per address spammed (so potentially €570,000 in this case).
it@cork is a not-for-profit, IT professionals networking organisation, based in Cork. I am on the steering committee of it@cork, helping out with the running as much as I can in a voluntary capacity.
Comments
18 responses to “Monster steals email addresses and spams it@cork membership”
What’s the deal with everyone spamming this Monday?
A nice big whopping fine for some spamming organisation and a whole lot of bad publicity might make people think twice before doing this.
Very, very annoying.
Perhaps this issue should be escalated to some of Mt Burns’ US counterparts?
[…] Today, Monster.com have taken one step closer to their goal: becoming responsible for all the spam on the internet. They spammed just about every internet user in Cork (except me, hehehe). Tom Raftery has the details: Monster steals email addresses and spams it@cork membership. […]
Ach I came by here to see if there were anymore comments from Pedro, its giving me a right laugh this Tuesday morning. But alas, he hasn’t commented here, yet…
[…] Monster steals email addresses and spams it@cork membership. (Tom Raftery) […]
[…] Tom Raftery posted yesterday to let the world know that Monster.ie doesn’t quite grasp the concept of the DPA (Data Protection Act) which covers personal data like email addresses. This morning one of it@cork’s members forwarded us an email conversation he had with John Burns, Monster’s Business Development Manager in Ireland. We were incredulous when we read it. […]
[…] to my site using a feedreader or email. Thanks for visiting – Damien.It seems the mess after Monster.com employee John Burns, Monster’s Business Development Manager in Ireland, spammed IT@Cork members is getting better. […]
And while we’re at it – has anyone else been spammed by the Golden Spiders recently? I have. And over on Michele’s blog Tom mentioned that too.
If the Data Commissioners are going to act and do anything, they should be catching all the nasty spamming criminals!
[…] Tom’s post about Monster stealing addresses from IT@Cork and was a bit shocked – more so by John […]
[…] dear. Monster.ie is the latest company to spam bloggers. Both Michele and Tom were spammed as part of an email campaign targeting it@Cork members. Monster harvested the emails […]
[…] mash) They did the Monster mash (The Monster mash) The speling it waz trashh (They did the mash) Tom blogged it in a flash (They did the mash) And so began the […]
Monster.ie apparently, well, sending unsolicited email…
Monster, the big weird recruitment agency, is apparently spamming various people involved in IT@Cork. And someone with a Monster IP address (but who doesn’t work for Monster, dear me, no) is jumping in to defend them. Shills should at least……
[…] is it blogwagon) but things are getting interesting in the Irish blogsphere at the moment over a spam email sent from a Monster employee to all the members of IT@cork. I’m not going to publish the guys name […]
[…] As well as providing an awful service (unless a career in selling tupperware by phone is what you really want to do with your life) they’ve now started up that most shitty of modern inconveniences, namely, the Spam email campaign. […]
Is the rest of the country safe?
[…] get more fun as Tom Raftery blogs about it and then gets threatened with legal action unless he finds a patsy. Damien Mulley joins in and then […]
[…] Victims Bite Back! A recent case of spam by a Monster.com Irish staff member to the membership of a Cork technology network has a lesson for all business […]
No wonder people do not really ‘adore’ us recruiters…
Not all of us are that bad! Honest! ïŠ
Ivan
http://www.JobsBlog.ie
Was there any follow up on this ?
I think recruiters , especially the big ones get a bad rap for various reasons. The only thing with Ireland is that because it’s such a small place, you can’t get away with too much.
Paul
http://www.eirjobs.com/