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Ask HN: Anyone else receiving unsolicited Datadog marketing spam?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone else receiving unsolicited Datadog marketing spam?

#31
post #23

My wife is friends someone a DD sales person. I had no idea what her husband did for a living since I didn't know either. So we go over to their house for dinner and he finds out I'm head of a devops/SRE team and I got a DD sales pitch for close to 2 hours. I've never wanted to excuse myself to the bathroom and just sit in there doing nothing all night more in all my life.

Quoted post unavailable.

No, it's a common story of what DataDog sales is.

Used to be a customer, 7-figures annual invoice with DataDog, not anymore. Heck, working with them for years, I still managed to make a mistake and get 4-figures bill on my personal account.

Their sales are worse than paparazzi who spy on celebs. Avoid at all costs.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else receiving unsolicited Datadog marketing spam?

#32
As an owner of a couple of companies, I get almost constant unsolicited spam, SMS, and calls.

I generally ignore most. Occasionally, if I feel confident it will be honored, I unsub.

I just feel that it is corrosive, professionally, to complain about/attack others in a professional fora.

For example, LinkedIn often has stuff posted that could be used as a powerful emetic. I just ignore it. I may take note of the author, for consideration in professional relationships, but I won't usually say anything about their posting.

There are a number of subreddits, dedicated to sneering at others; I am aware of ones dedicated to sneering at programmers (having been honored by their attention).

While these may be de rigueur, while in high school or early college, I believe that it's a bad idea to continue participating in these types of things, once we start earning a paycheck. Often, the people we slag, can end up in a position to do us favors, hire us, or fire us. Some corporations simply won't even consider us, if our name shows up in these places (I know that the one I worked for was obsessed with brand protection, and would not consider folks that they believed would not reflect well on their brand).

That also goes for posting attacks; no matter how "genteel," in places like this very forum. I generally avoid getting into pissing matches with folks, hereabouts.

As George Bernard Shaw said:

Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else receiving unsolicited Datadog marketing spam?

#33
post #3

I would not take any of it so seriously. This is really common across multiple companies. I'm work in a Data Science org and get so much crap like this. I think there is some CRM that automatically sends these emails to all the email addresses in their system. Your email address is easy to figure out since every company has something like first.lastname@company.com, finitiallastname@company.com etc. You can use Linke…

> Eventually the CRM system will realize you are never going to respond

Citation needed. In my experience this does not happen. Additionally, even if true, the rate of new companies employing this strategy will mean that your inbox will always be full.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else receiving unsolicited Datadog marketing spam?

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

No, it's a common story of what DataDog sales is. Used to be a customer, 7-figures annual invoice with DataDog, not anymore. Heck, working with them for years, I still managed to make a mistake and get 4-figures bill on my personal account. Their sales are worse than paparazzi who spy on celebs. Avoid at all costs.

I think it speaks more towards salesmen in general than Datadog

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else receiving unsolicited Datadog marketing spam?

#37

If you’re in Europe (or a citizen living outside) you can make a GDPR subject access request to get a copy of your data. Try to specifically ask for a record of how your data was obtained. And you can also ask to be deleted permanently. It might or might not work but it’s what you are entitled to under the GDPR. edit: check out https://yourdigitalrights.org/ which might give you some templates and check whether you’r…

The argument they make is that it's OK because they got your details from a "public" data source, plus guesswork. E.g. LinkedIn plus your company domain. They're still supposed to notify you when your info was transferred to them though. The problem is that this is in breach of LinkedIn terms and conditions, which means I immediately write off the company: if they can't lawfully find marketing leads, which should I t…

IANAL and could be wrong here, but I don’t think it matters. Personal data is personal. Even if it’s posted publicly it’s still personal data. Email is personal data. Your name is personal data. Plus spam laws are a thing.

In any case, at the very least GDPR gives you a chance to delete your data. Hopefully so it doesn’t reappear either.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else receiving unsolicited Datadog marketing spam?

#38
post #24

I've had seen this from a number of companies: Datadog, Snyk, and Mongo are the most recognizable offenders, but I get this from dozens of companies every week. They ignore unsubscribe requests and my requests to stop contacting me when they call my personal number. I just report them to FTC now for not respecting the do not call list (which my number is on). Other than that, their tactics ensure their products don't…

Much of the spam sent to my business' email address doesn't even have an automated unsubscribe capability. The unsubscribe link is just a mailto: address, which I am convinced these shady operators use to indicate the mailbox is being watched and, thus, a good target for future mailings.

They go right into Fastmail spam and are scored accordingly.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else receiving unsolicited Datadog marketing spam?

#39
post #23

My wife is friends someone a DD sales person. I had no idea what her husband did for a living since I didn't know either. So we go over to their house for dinner and he finds out I'm head of a devops/SRE team and I got a DD sales pitch for close to 2 hours. I've never wanted to excuse myself to the bathroom and just sit in there doing nothing all night more in all my life.

Quoted post unavailable.

Offensive because you work at DD?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else receiving unsolicited Datadog marketing spam?

#40

This is why there is an unsubscribe link for unsolicited spam/ad email as legally required. Just use it. Unsolicited email isn't illegal so you just have to deal with it. I wish I was -only- getting spam from datadog that I could opt out of instead of unceasing spam from places that the unsubscribe link is just a confirmation that your email address is real.

I don't think anyone in this thread is claiming it's illegal; however, it could be considered unethical and, at a minimum, highly annoying. Also, many times the "unsubscribe" links do nothing more than generate a new email to the same sender, which in my opinion is often used to verify leads.
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