Be more careful with promotional messages

American Society for Industrial Security ASIS (American Society for Industrial Security) in San Diego recently received a form of postal mail advertising that looks like a bill of payment, including the sender and a leaf title. letter to pay money from the company named Listing Corp. But in fact it is an advertisement. The company says that for $ 60, Listing Corp will put the ASIS website into 20 search engines (without naming), then report it by e-mail quarterly to customers every quarter. And the back of the document is bold: this is not an invoice, this is an offer, you don't have to pay any money unless you accept this offer.

Source: yellowsubterfuge After paying the fee, ASIS does not hear anything from Listing Corp. And after a few months of registering this service, ASIS typed in the search term for its company name on some search engines, there was no link to the ASIS website.

According to a Postal Inspection Service, there are many complaints about the issue and the organization is considering whether Listing Corp. It is illegal or not. Find on Google the phrase "listing corp." Only links appear to blogs and forums. And according to MaxterHost.com spokesperson, leasing the Listing Corp. website domain name, said the company closed the site last March because the company received too much criticism (the site opened again, hired another domain name company.

Listing Corp. without responding to e-mail requests from registered users, both company phone numbers are invalid and postal addresses are a New York mailbox.

A trick

Listing Corp. just one of the few companies that sent such offers to companies with domain names. And the US surveillance system (U.S. Postal Inspection Service Fraud Complaint System ) has recorded 875 complaints about such letters, totaling $ 8161 damage.

Investigate for this article, there are more than a dozen websites with similar marketing content. Some websites do not exist anymore but can only be accessed using Google "cached" versions. Web sites that "live" at the end of April have three of these critics: Internet Corporation Listing Service () has its registered address in California, USA; Internet Listing Service Corp. () has an address in the Netherlands; and Internet Listing Service () registered in Azerbaijan.

When trying to get in touch with the companies above, they all received the same answer and the answer was still limp, unable to solve anything. And when investigating the geographic addresses of marketing e-mails from ilscorp.net and ilscorp.co.uk, they are all in the same IP address somewhere in Canada.

If you or your company received the same letter, read it carefully and contact the local government or consumer rights organization.

PC World USA 07/2006