Symantec Marketing Sucks

I recently evaluated several network intrusion detection/prevention systems and some other security-related tools. Suddenly, in the last few weeks, I'm awash in cold-calls from various international numbers from people claiming to be Symantec or Geotrust and wanting, desperately, to send me some idiotic white paper, no doubt telling me all about the wonderful, windows-only solutions they have to solve who knows what problem I don't have. The people calling are hard to understand as their VOIP system sucks even worse than the one my employer is moving to, and their accents don't help either. But the gist of of the calls are, "Your email address is REDACTED correct?" and before they can then tell me about some swell white paper they want to send me (as well as selling my contact info to all 'n sundry as "verified" no doubt), I tell them that I'm not interested.

Ok, no big deal, right? Everyone in IT these days is awash in idiotic, waste-of-time cold calls of a similar nature. And responding to any one of them only leads to dozens more per day. So what. Well, I've gotten 3 calls in the last 3 days from 3 different Marketing drones reading from the same damn script, all allegedly from Symantec/Geotrust.

But wait! That's not enough. On the 16th I got an email from isales@geotrust.com (nope, I'm not obfuscating that email address - please, oh please, spam it into oblivion) thanking me for my interest in GeoTrust SSL certificates. I've NEVER expressed any such interest. Not once. I politely replied saying this was strange since I'd never expressed any interest thinking they'd just bought some useless spam... er, I mean marketing database they needed to update. Fine. Then on the 18th I got another email, this time from ishaam_ramathoolal@symantec.com (yep, feel free to spam the crap outta that address too), also thanking me for my interest in GeoTrust SSL Certificates. WTF? I'm betting my innocuous reply saying I wasn't interested and don't email me anymore was received but not read and led to an escalation to a different marketing drone? Is everyone at Symantec just plain stupid?

Looking in our mail logs, I see other members of the IT department get Symantec/Geotrust spam too. Here's some other email addresses that spammed us (no doubt fake personnas - nobody in Marketing uses their REAL email address anymore - they don't want to get unsolicited email like that which they're sending after all):
acalvert@geotrust.com
us-sales@ec.geotrust.com
SSL_isales@symantec.com
andrew_hay@symantec.com


Strong message follows, Symantec... Leave me the FSCK alone! I will NEVER buy any Symantec product at this point and will vehemently lobby against them if and when the name is ever raised in any meeting at any job I work at. Your marketing efforts are CRAP and I resent being harassed. The fact that your Marketing minions are polite isn't relevant. Calling me multiple times in a row, with barely usable VOIP, from people in foreign countries who no doubt will do your bidding for not much more than a glass of water and a toothpick is NOT encouraging me to buy any of your products. It's having the opposite effect.

Update

So, today I get another cold-call from some international number and Oh Joy! I find out it's geotrust again. I feel a little bad for the telesales minion they hired to make the call because I lost my temper and didn't even allow him to finish his first sentence. He got the word "geotrust" out and I lost it... I asked him why was geotrust bugging me? Sending me emails about whitepapers I didn't ask for, expressed no interest in, etc? Why were they bugging me even after I'd opted myself out of lists I didn't opt in for... TWICE!

Symantec/Geotrust, since you can't seem to understand polite responses, let me make this as plain as I can. FSCK OFF AND LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE! Got it? Can I make it any more plain? Can you hear me now?

Another update

And it continues to go on... I sent an email to abuse@symantec.com and abuse@geotrust.com to see if maybe they could get the ball rolling on telling someone at Symantec that I'm not interested in hearing from them. Yet this morning I got yet another cold call from some marketing minion in some call-center somwhere in Europe. WTF.

So... I guess maybe I'll start keeping track of every email address from and reply-to address from every lame marketer who feels free to spam me here in the hopes that every other spammer on the planet will start to tell them about the marvelous lists they have to sell, the pharmacopia they have to sell, etc. So here's a list of losers for the other losers to scrape off the web page and add to their lists.