Imported from previous forum
After posting on this site I have received my second piece of spam (FIX advertising) from Aegisoft. I post this to let the adminstrators know that they are harvesting email addresses off of this site. The person sending the email is Steven Santivenere.
I will not consider their product because of this.
Erik, the gentleman who posted first, was not the only one. I also received at least 2 or 3 pieces of email from this company unsolicited. Not sure whether they got the address from my postings to this site, from the FIX working groups I’m on, or from other sources (e.g. I attended the SIA conference in June '01 and a BMA Tech conference in Dec. '01). The name used on these unsolicited emails was same as the one noted below.
> After posting on this site I have received my second piece of spam (FIX advertising) from Aegisoft. I post this to let the adminstrators know that they are harvesting email addresses off of this site. The person sending the email is Steven Santivenere.
>
> I will not consider their product because of this.
>
Hi Lisa,
Did I miss something? – What gentleman that posted first? The Aegisoft unsolicitted ad says that I can unsubscribe from their spamming list, but I don’t like unsubscribing to things I never subscribed to.
I hope others who are receiving this FIX junkmail will speak up so that this worthwhile forum does not turn into a circus for people trying to hawk their FIX software and services.
I also question whether Silicon SUmmit should be allowed to use the URL www.fixprotocol.com. It seems this was done to confuse people into believing that SS is the standard or some other nonsense. It seems to be a very unethical business practice on the part of Larry Gusta. Anyone else have any feelings on this? Has this organization done something about it?
Erik, I agree these sales tactics are undesireable but if you put your email address into the public arena or if a url is there for the taking, marketing people will take advantage. You can’t put the blame on this discussion group. You are only giving these companies more publicity.
I am not blaming this discussion group as I think it’s a good one - I am blaming those two companies for underhanded tactics in the hopes that the negative publicity will not be a good thing for them. I was also hoping that the site owners here might be able to take some action such as when blatant advertising is done here. I don’t mind getting an unsolicited email from someone even if it’s to say “hey take a look at my product”, but I don’t like the computer generated emails that fill up my inbox and subscribe me to things I don’t want to be subscribed to. If these companies are so desperate to get their products out there it only leads me to believe that they are not very good products. In addition, what Silicon Summit (Gusta) has done is like somone starting a watch company called Rollex. Heck, maybe he should also buy the www.fixstandard.com URL … I’m thinking of buying www.larrygusta.com 
> After posting on this site I have received my second piece of spam (FIX advertising) from Aegisoft. I post this to let the adminstrators know that they are harvesting email addresses off of this site. The person sending the email is Steven Santivenere.
>
> I will not consider their product because of this.
> Erik,
Aegis Software attempts to send our emails to people who are likely to be interested in our message and every email from us has an easy way to opt-out of future emails. Interest in our products is high and we are serving those people who are interested. We certainly have no intention of harassing people who are not interested and we regret any inconveniences this may have caused.
If you would like to discuss this matter personally, please do not hesitate to call me directly at 212-651-9465.
Regards,
Steven Santivenere
Aegis Software
I’m a little too busy to debate the issue with you over the phone and I don’t want to unsubscribe to things I never subscribed to. If I do unsubscribe you get the additional benefit of knowing that I was fooled into looking at your ad rather than just deleting it to begin with. If you want to send me paper junk mail, fine, it costs you money and I’ll probably just recycle the paper, but your unsolicited e-ads cost you next to nothing and waste my time in having to constantly delete them.
[ original email was from Ryan Pierce - rpierce@taltrade.com ]
> I’m a little too busy to debate the issue with you over the phone and I don’t want to unsubscribe to things I never subscribed to. If I do unsubscribe you get the additional benefit of knowing that I was fooled into looking at your ad rather than just deleting it to begin with.
This is an excellent point. While I would imagine firms in this industry are quite a bit more above-board than the average spammer, clicking opt-out links does have its dangers if the spammer is unscrupulous.
I was rather shocked once to receive a spam in which the spammer was offering me for sale millions of E-mail addresses that had at one point replied to or clicked on an opt-out link. The premise was that such addresses are more valuable because they prove that a human has read the message and somehow responded.
Needless to say, I never clicked the opt-out link on that particular piece of spam…
[ original email was from Ryan Pierce - rpierce@taltrade.com ]
Two forums, Product Discussion and Help Wanted, have been created purposefully for solitications. These are opt-in forums. Aegis Software or any other company is perfectly welcome to post product advertisements in Product Discussions, and only those persons on this site interested in receiving such information will see it. Doing so has the added advantages that it may reach lurkers who never post and are not members of working groups, that these advertisements may be viewed on the web by people not subscribed to the list, and may even be picked up by search engines. Aegis Software was one of the first users of that forum.
I find the harvesting of E-mail addresses from this web site for bulk E-mail solicitation, especially in light of the opt-in forums created for the purpose of advertising, to be highly reprehensible. Doing so shows a profound lack of respect for the FIX community. Such firms are effectively saying, “Limiting myself to the opt-in list this site provides is beneath me. I need to reach all those people who haven’t chosen to opt-in as well!”
Disclaimer: These opinions are my own, and are not representative of my employer or FIX Protocol Ltd.