I'm Getting Spam from PsychPage
May 2, 2006
The short answer is - "No, it's not from us".

The longer answer is... much longer. A spamming company (TenTenTwelveCorp apparently) is sending out emails promoting stock for several companies. These include (at this point):
  • Budget Waste, Inc (BDWT)
  • China World Trade Corporation (CWTD) (1 2)
  • CyberHand (CYHD)
  • De Greko
  • IKarma (IKMA)
  • HE-5 Resources, Corp Natural Resources Company (HRRP)
  • InZon Corp (IZON)
  • LabWire, Inc (LBWR)
  • Metro Gold Mines Mineral Resources (MGMX)
  • Pingchuan Pharmaceutical, Inc (PGCN)
  • Riverbank Invt Corp (RRBK)
  • SouthWestern Medical, Inc (SWNM)
  • StickyWeb, Inc (SIKY)
  • Stonebridge Resources Exploration, LTD (SBRX)
The text of the email actually isn't text, but an imbedded picture that can thus skip spam filters. They may be sending the email from their own servers, but more than likely are using a net of zombie PCs that are infected with malware that sends their spam for them from other people's PCs without the owner's knowledge.

Maybe it's an effort to increase interest, sales of the stock, and drive up the prices before someone dumps the stock themselves. It's called a "pump-n-dump scam" (1 and 2 and 3) and is illegal. However, maybe it's a plan to harm the reputation of these companies... Who knows?

What the spammer does is forge the headers in the email itself, so that if you look at the underlying code of the email, you get a history of where the email came from that is all fabricated. The return address for the email is also forged, with all sorts of made up names and, in this case, "@psychpage.com" added on. This is called a "joe job"; while it might not be intended to directly harm PsychPage, what the spammer is doing is 1) forging headers on emails, 2) forging return addresses, and 3) either trying to harm a company's reputation or inflate stock prices. All three of these are illegal, and he or she is trying to place the blame on others and evade detection and capture.

PsychPage.com is not the only site being hit like this: The problem for legitimate sites like us is that:

1) Our sites look to be spammer sites, and anyone who tries to block our domains to cope with this ends up blocking any legit emails we might send;

2) While we aren't sending the email, we're flooded with it too. Some of the email addresses on the spammers list are valid, and some are not. When a spam is sent to an invalid email address, the email providers (Earthlink, AOL, Yahoo, GMail etc...) read the return email address, and send to it a "bounced" or "undeliverable" message. Each day I now received more "bounced" and "undeliverable" mail messages in my Inbox than real mail and normal spam combined.

I tried complaining to the companies advertised, thinking they must be promoting themselves by hiring a spammer, and received no response. Then I started sending them all the bounced email coming to me, and they finally responded.

Dr. Niolon,

We too are perplexed and irritated by this continuing trouble with e-mails. Labwire is not sending these or causing these to be sent out. Many have other company announcements attached to them and seem to be trying to hide behind our name. As much havoc as this has caused you, it has caused us ten fold. I’ve tried to respond personally to every e-mail complaint that has come in (hundreds), and we are trying every way we can to track these back to their source. We welcome the SEC’s or anyone else’s help in stopping this.

Labwire is a real company with real contracts, revenues, and earnings and we have no need of this type of trash out there. Every time I do a press release lately various degrees of this pop up and it has hurt our stock price as well.

If you develop any more leads or information, please send them directly to my attention and we will vigorously pursue them.

I’m truly sorry for the inconvenience this is causing you.

Dexter Morris
Chairman / CEO
Labwire, Inc.
14133 Memorial Drive, Ste. 1
Houston, TX 77079

Dear Dr. Niolon,

We are aware that " someone " has launched an illegal email spam campaign regarding Southwestern Medical Solutions stock. I can assure you that as a company we do not condone, tolerate or partake in such illegal tactics to promote our company or our stock.

Unfortunately it seems that some individual or individuals (possibly overzealous investors) took one of our press releases that was disseminated through legitimate financial news networks and launched an illegal e-mail campaign in an attempt to inflate our stock price and volume so they could sell their stock at an inflated price.

This has been a problem with Southwestern Medical Solutions as well as many other microcap, startup, and developmental company's stock. As you can see on the web sites that you cited for Basil Meecham the nine or so companies that were mentioned as being targets are basically developmental, microcap companies such as ours. I can assure you that the SEC (United States Securities And Exchange Commission) and other regulatory bodies are aware of these issues and as always Southwestern Medical Solutions will continue to cooperate with them.

Your e-mail was forwarded to me because being in investor relations I handled the majority of the phone calls and e-mails regarding this issue. I fielded calls and e-mails from the Department of Homeland Security, the IRS, a federal prison, a United States Congressman, three or four state universities, Italy, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and many private and business concerns from most of the states here in the US regarding this issue.

I also fielded calls from two of the major brokerage firms and other individuals that were prospective investors in our company. I told EVERYBODY that made those type of inquiries of the the illegal e-mail spamming issue and suggested that they not even consider investing in our company for a period of at least two weeks. I suggested that if they wish to call back in two weeks I would be happy to provide them with information about our company in hopes that the spamming issues would have subsided by then, and they would have a more accurate assessment of how our stock normally trades by volume and price.

I have retained the information on the brokerage firms and brokers that I spoke with. Likewise I have also retained information on other conversations and e-mails that can be provided should any of the investigating agencies question our motives and or efforts. We are a small developmental company with very limited resources. To say that we were overburdened by responding to this issue would be an understatement. My workday is generally over at 5:00 p.m. however, the whole week during this e-mail campaign I didn't leave until 11:30 p.m. every night. I personally made sure that every single e-mail and telephone call that we received was followed up with an e-mail and or return telephone call. While the spammers may have accomplished their goal (short-term price and volume increase) we have always been a company that looks at our long-term goals and longevity.

I truly wish that I had a better answer for this situation. We would like to offer our sincerest apologies for any inconvenience this situation may have caused you however, it is impossible for us to stop or control this situation because it's not being instituted from our company or any company we have contracted with. We would like to thank you for taking your time to bring this matter to our attention.

Sincerely,
Curtis Atwell
Investor Relations

Hi Richard,
I apologize for not responding to your earlier email. I've received thousands of emails this past 10 days from angry people making it physically impossible for me to read and respond individually to each one. I would like to assure you (and the rest of those who have had their lives disrupted by this) that iKarma is not responsible for the spam they have been tortured with these past few days. iKarma.com is in the online reputation business, so you can imagine how angry we are that spammers have soiled our reputation by doing the very thing every internet user in the world truly hates.

Like yourself, many people automatically assume that because this spam appears to be "promoting" iKarma, that we must somehow be behind this abuse. But by reading this spam in its entirety (with its bogus disclaimer) it quickly becomes clear that this may have actually been designed to do us more harm than good. My team and I have invested an enormous amount of money, time, energy and love into the long term success of our company. Putting this at risk to Spam investors for short term gain is not part of our business plan.

We hope everyone understands that almost any promising small company where the founders stock is restricted and the public float is small and volatile can become a target for manipulation. Our research also seems to indicate that these spammers mix promotions for stocks they are paid to promote with stocks they are not to avoid patterns that might lead to detection. We also have competitors in our market (with their own investors across the world) who may see iKarma as a threat.

We suspect this spam was designed to produce the exact angry response it did in each of those who received it. The spammers even seem to be taunting those who complain by sending additional emails to anyone who responds to the sender. In some cases it appears that they are using the email addresses of complainers as the forged sender on their next spam. Further enraging those most likely to complain. Strangest of all is the fact that the spam even mentioned our membership in an organization that is active in the fight against spam and where I have been a speaker on the subject of building good word-of-mouth.

Our business at iKarma depends on our ability to contact our users without getting blocked by spam filters. So sending spam is the last thing we would do to promote our company. We also depend on a positive public reputation to promote our brand. Spamming would damage the very foundation on which our company was built.

We commend you in your efforts to fight spam and we support the idea that protection of small investors and consumers must take priority over the shame and sadness we feel about having our company name listed on your web sites. So while we may feel that this makes us victims of this abuse a second time, we understand that consumer protection must take priority.

We regret that this spam has caused everyone (including us) so much aggravation and I hope this letter to you will in some way help redeem iKarma in all of your eyes. We have posted a notice on the front of our web site and we are working with all of our resources to discover who is responsible for this unauthorized abuse.

It appears that the spam about iKarma has stopped for now. Most of the complaints I have coming in now seem to be for emails sent earlier, but just now picked up. We've made it very clear in a message posted to the front of our website that spamming to promote iKarma is actually detrimental. We hope that the spammers now know that spamming to "promote" iKarma is counterproductive and we believe that if they are motivated by money they will stop. We have our fingers crossed. For now it appears that the spammers have moved on and they seem to be "promoting" a new company using the same spam-bots and .gif attachment to pass through spam filters. I hope you have managed to avoid being a victim of this new company.

Sincerely,
Paul Williams
CEO
iKarma Inc.
1203 Town Center Drive
Suite 212
Jupiter, Florida 33458

Thus... there's three things to take from this:

1) If you are getting spam purportedly from PsychPage, remember it's not from us and probably not from the companies advertised (see IKarma response).

2) This really ought to be a good example of how spam is costly to everyone but the spammers; forward such emails to the FTC and SEC, as paying for someone to handle this kind of crime is why we pay taxes, though this may do little good.

3) If you are not running a spyware/adware/malware/virus scanner of some sort, and are not running firewall software, YOU may well be one of the people sending out this spam without knowing it. Engage in safe computing by taking basic steps to protect your computer.

Richard Niolon, Ph.D.