Theft: Definition: The act of stealing; specifically, the felonious taking and removing of personal property, with an intent to deprive the rightful owner of the same; larceny.

Theft also applies in the online world and happens more often then we’d care to admit.

I’ve talked about image/graphic theft and today I am going to talk about email poaching!
Yep that’s right there are people out there just waiting to steal your email addresses and send you crap.
That’s why it’s been made illegal!

A friend of mine Millie has just recently had her own run in with an email poacher/thief.
The worst part of this theft was that it was done by someone whom she trusted.
Millie owns a couple traffic exchanges and last week some of her members came to her expressing their concern that they were receiving emails from one of her friends “Steve”, They were furious at her for handing out her email address when her site clearly states she would do no such thing.
Millie informed these members she’d done no such thing and would look into the matter right away, She became so upset she felt her career online was ruined due to this blemish.
She went on the hunt to see what had just happened and how her email list had ended up in Steve’s hands.

Steve owns Songman Hits, another traffic exchange and Steve had been helping Millie with some of her stuff regarding her site and had FULL access to all her emails.
When Millie confronted him regarding the emails being sent he had quite a tale to tell.
He freely admitted to doing an email scrape/harvest (http://www.projecthoneypot.org/law_of_harvesting.php)
He stated her emails must have gotten in there somehow that way and that he was not sure why they had gotten there.
He told her to give her the list of emails and he would remove them.
This would be story number 1 from Steve.

Story number 2 would come a few days later when Steve was outed publicly for his behavior. People were warned not to allow him access to their sites as there was now documented proof from Millie that he had in fact  poached her email list!
Story 2: He would later write to another friend (in which I have myself read and kept this email) that he “BOUGHT” his list and that THEY did an email scrape to grab emails.
What he does not seem to realize is that email scraping/harvesting is a form of theft.

Steve now see’s the heat is ON and no matter what he says he knows it’s not looking good for him.
He proceeds to call me and my mother and other friends “Shallow” for telling him what he did was against spam laws.
We’re shallow? I’d much rather be shallow then a thief or spammer!
I’d much rather have the respect of my peers for being honest and trustworthy then be a backstabbing liar who twists and turns the truth to suit their needs.

On to Story 3: He’s been HACKED! and that’s how all these emails were stolen.
Funny really, this all happened over a week ago and just now all of a sudden he was hacked and that must be the reason why her PRIVATE emails got taken.
Yet in 2 separate stories he admits to emailing her and her members about his site….Includes “I’m not a bad person, I was just trying to build my site like everyone else.”
You Steve  from Songman Hits tried to build your list through LIES!
You took something that did not belong to you, You emailed people you had no right to email.
None of these people had signed up for your service, none of these people had given you permission to email them but you went and used someone who was your friend to try and make a buck.

You Steve are shallow! you know what you did and you know you’ve been caught and now your not even man enough to just stand up and admit it.

Try and smear me all you’d like, I will not be silenced! I will not shut up, I will let the world know that you are a thief and you went out and stole from your so called friends.
I will not allow you to promote your stolen graphics on my site an nor will a lot of other people.

You can spin whatever web you’d like that fact is your still a poison spider looking for a meal ticket.
You should be ashamed of the person you became in these moments.

Maybe once you admit what you did and come clean about it people will again respect you but as you continue to spill these lies of stupidity all we see is a shallow coward who got caught with his tail between his legs.