Monster Ireland Career Advice

MONSTER, THE JOBS site with global reach, has written a case study in how to lose friends and skewer professional reputations by misappropriating e-mail addresses of contacts used in Irish marketing campaigns. This information comes second-hand from the astute rain-maker Michele Neylon who noted "the Monster email was particularly bad, as the person who sent it obviously doesn't know how to send mass email properly and included all the recipients in the CC field." Neylon knew what to do about the irritation. He submitted it to Spamcop and that effectively blocks incoming mail from Monster reaching my Yahoo! in box. All the better.

But not too good for Monster, a company that needs to develop its business by reaching potential influencers who could recommend Monster as an employment agency of first regard. Now that Monster mail is spam-blocked from my mail system, no fewer than 10 potential web developers and multimedia programmers each month will not receive Monster mail through the Moodle e-learning and placement service that we maintain at Tipperary Institute.

From listening to and working with other staff members in Monster, I know the company takes any abuse of  its own products and services very seriously. I had expected the same standard when Monster Ireland staff combed over e-mail addresses procured through open membership directories. As far as I remember, Monster has a team dedicated to enforcing compliance with data protection standards. After reading Tom Raftery's experience, I wonder if anyone has upchanneled the story to Monster's fraud team: reportfraud@monster.com because that mail used to go to April Jodoin, Manager of the Compliance and Anti-Fraud team at Monster. From what I have read, Monster itself should clamp down and enforce the applicable Irish data protection standards.

 

I don't know how Monster will dig itself out of this mess. In our part of the jobs universe, Monster have lost the autumn semester of placements for several southeast Ireland third level institutions. In no uncertain terms, Monster has violated legislation that protects the use and restrictions surrounding online address elements. Simply put, data can only be used for the purposes for which it is obtained. No one has given Monster permission to use the bank of email addresses that fueled part of its Monday spam campaign. From my perspective, Monster is in a difficult position. If improper use is acknowledged, penalties can follow. If Monster Ireland blindly asserts its right to harvest and mass mail, it exposes itself as ignorant at best.

In the meantime, there are plenty of other recruitment firms to select in the IT market today. Most of them respect the data protection provisions as outlined by law.

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Michele Neylon -- "Irish Companies Don't Get Email Marketing vs Spam"
Tom Raftery -- "Monster Steals Email Addresses and Spams itCork Membership"
Wait! There's More! -- "Monster threaten legal action and ask me to blame someone else"
Damien Mulley -- "Monster Ireland Spam Irish People and Follow it Up with Legal Threats"

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Comments

[James]

Well, I don't agree that most of the recruiting companies respect data protection legislation, although certainly none of them are quite so blatant as this. I feel bad for the guy - I think he genuinely didn't realise that this was a serious issue and made some poor choices in responding.

[Bernie Goldbach]

One of the most effective ways to combat spam is to react when it arrives and to take constructive action. You can bet many more people know about this issue because of the rabid reaction on blogs to it.

[M Buckley]

"many more people know about this issue because of the rabid reaction on blogs to it."

There are many other possible reactions to spam besides getting angry. Rabid posting, even from a position of apparent strength makes for dull reading.
Spam is a nuisance, but the time and energy some experts seem to spend in fighting it seems to be out of proportion to the problems it causes. Most people are reasonable and come to an amicable arrangement. All the "naming and shaming" can reflect poorly on the people who try to make other companies look bad.

[Bernie Goldbach]

I am not angry. I am just surprised at the continuing misuse of personal data by well-intentioned marketers. This is starting to become a firing issue in the eyes of two Fortune 500 firms consulting with me.

[Alan Doherty]

M Buckley
"Spam is a nuisance, but the time and energy some experts seem to spend in fighting it seems to be out of proportion to the problems it causes. Most people are reasonable and come to an amicable arrangement. All the "naming and shaming" can reflect poorly on the people who try to make other companies look bad."

i think sir you are unaware of the extent of the problem we are fighting on your behalf. probably because like most users of the internet there are already defences in place between your inbox and the spam out there

but for those of us that see the real cost of the spam problem heres a quick idea of the issue after filtering I personally recieve about 1 to 2 spams a day
my filtering solutions are changed/updated daily for me and my customers {who i provide anti-spam and e-mail services for}
these filters and updates are based on lots of man hours work by volenteers reporting spam.

and now the why
without filtering i would recieve an adverage of 1 spam per minute on a one month sampleing {sometimes up to 1 per sec}
if i and my customers did not have filtering buisness would grind to a halt
cost implications
the machines used to recieve / filter e-mail dedicate about 95% of their time to checking /blocking spam
thus spam is 95% of the cost of providing e-mail atm thus e-mail would be a hell of a lot cheaper if we could get rid of these ppl.

so i say name/shame and hope that 1 person detered educates many that would otherwise add to the already beond breaking point problem.

simply put its criminal {mainly}
its completly un-ethical
its absolutly immoral

and to defend it is ill-educated at best, sir