"While porno-XXX sites have been using this `marketing stratgey' for sometime now, now "innocent" portals/sites are also resorting to cheap tacticsof Cyber-girls sending unsolicited e-mails, enticing male Netsurfers tovisit particular Websites," says cyber law expert-Pavan Duggal, who has alsobeen spammed by unsolicited mails.

For instance, check out the following customized mail sent from someonecalled Urvashi Seth (email id:coolurvashi64@hotmail. com) to my husband,enticing him to look her up at www.coolbuddy.com: "Dearest cutiepie, Hi!!Eversince, I've seen you, I've fallen in love with you. You are so veryspecial that I feel gifted to have you with me and you mean the world to me.Have faith and things will work out our way. Hey, you also seem interestedin me. But there's a catch for you. wanna contact me. You have to search methrough http://www.coolbuddy.com. I love you!!! Yours and only yours.Urvi".

However, my spouse said (and I choose to believe him because a colleaguealso received a similar mail from the same site) that he did not know anyperson called Urvashi and that he had not given his email-id tocoolbuddy.com.

"When I clicked on the link given in the mail, I was surprised to see thatcoolbuddy.com is not a porn site, but a place where old acquaintances get intouch with each other," my colleague said. I then sent a mail to Urvashi atthe given e-mail address, but it bounced back saying, "the account isinactive". So was Urvashi a real person - or a surreal strategy for moreclicks at coolbuddy.com?

When contacted, the CEO of coolbuddy.com -- Amit Aggarwal -- denied that hiscompany had sent any such mails to people: "I am already in the top twentysites in the country, getting more than 2 million hits per month and do nothave to resort to these gimmicks.''

While Aggarwal admitted that number of hits did attract revenue in terms ofadvertisements, he also said that the revenue generated from advertisementswas miniscule. ``The real funds come from the venture capitalists (VCs) andthey only see performance on the basis of registrations and not on thenumber of hits,'' he pointed out.

In fact, according to him, spamming does not serve any purpose and onlyspoils the image of the site: "This is because coolbuddy.com is not a sexsite catering to only men. It is a search engine, which enables old friendsfrom any sex and age group to get in touch with each other."

In fact, he believes that ``Urvashi'' is a genuine person, who is trying tobuild a community of like-minded people and asking people to join her clubor association. According to Aggarwal, "This is a common practice in theWest, where people can form their own clubs on sites like Yahoo. Since inIndia, we are the only one which offers to register their club orassociation, she found this the right place."

However, a message left for Urvashi at coolbuddy.com also did not elicit anyresponse, thereby raising the question that if this person is indeedinterested in building a community, why does she not reply, when a messageis left for her (if it's a `she').

Another person, called Hitesh Dixit, who has also received unsolicitedmails, also does not buy this argument of `community-building': "This isdefinitely spamming".

Hunting for Kiran
Dixit, who is a chartered accountant in a Mumbai based-IT company, hadreceived the following unsolicited e-mail at his Yahoo account, from someonecalled Kiran, inviting him to find her details in a site calledwww.huntindia.com: "Hi, this is Kiran and I want to be your friend. Wouldyou like to be my friend? If you want to know more before taking the plunge,check out my details at "make friend" section of www.huntindia.com. Mydetails are in the `Romance' category of `Any City'. Hoping to hear apositive reply from your end!! and you should think yourself to be LUCKY!!.C U SOON. Kiran"

A search revealed that Kiran had received more than 87 replies from peoplewho had received similar e-mails from her. All the replies, which can beread by everyone who visits the site, point out the these people werespammed with unsolicited mails.

According to one such reply Kiran received, which is posted at the huntindiaWebsite, from Nick Achpee (pardon the spellings), "Well, Kiran, or whateveru r. u've got nice idea of attracting ppl towards this Web site...i doubtwhether u get paid or u r among the owners of this Website. Hecking pplse-mail address..is very easy. and i can see u r very successful atthat...lots of guyr r ur victims. Wish u all the best. Nick." Another"victim" of Kiran called Anand had a two-word tip for Kiran: "Stop spamming."To check if any person called Kiran does genuinely exist, I sent an e-mailto the e-mail id - kiran1982ad@yahoo.com - from which Kiran had sent theunsolicited mails. But my mail bounced back, with the message that the "userdoes not have a yahoo.com account." A message left for Kiran, on behalf ofone of the persons, to whom she had sent the mail also did not elicit anyreply. So once again the concern: is `Kiran' only a strategem to attract Netsurfers to Huntindia.com?

``No,'' said Christepher Lopez, CEO, huntindia.com, claiming that he was notaware of any such spamming activity and denied that his company had sent themails from ``Kiran''. According to him, "www.huntindia.com is a horizontalportal, which gets more than 1.2 million page views per month."

He admitted that the number of hits did matter when sites tapped VCs for thesecond round of funding: ``They want the number of hits to have grownthree-fold before they put in more money," Lopez said.

Marketing versus spamming
The flaw lies not in attracting customers to get more hits, but the methodused to do the same, explains Arun Aggarwal, director, Ties2Family.com. Mostwebsites, like other `real-world companies' in the early stages, usepromotional schemes to get more customers and create "stickiness" on theirsite, he adds.

Ties2Family is also holding a contest to attract more customers to its site.The contest requires the surfer and at least four of his/her family membersto register and log on to the family Web site during the duration of thecontest to enter a weekly lucky draw, which entitles the winning family to aholiday in Pattaya, Bangkok.

However, this is a perfectly legitimate way of increasing the number of hitsand building up a database of Netizens who wilfully register at your siteand agree to become a part of the mailing list of the company, says Duggal.But sending unsolicited mails is completely unethical and even illegal insome countries as this infringes upon the privacy of a person, he adds.

The other aspect is that since the e-mail addresses have not been taken fromthe recipients of these unsolicited mails, "the senders must have eitherhacked the database of some site or bought them from someone who has adatabase of e-mail-ids. And both of these options are illegal," points outDuggal.

Selling an electronic database or revealing details/e-mail addressessubmitted by the surfers, without their permission violates the privacy of aperson and is considered illegal in many countries, says Duggal. And eventhough in India, the cyber laws do not say much on privacy, most goodportals have a privacy policy, which promises not to reveal the detailssubmitted by people without their permission, he adds.