A couple weeks ago, my wife, mother and I got into a heated discussion
regarding a proposed housing development that threatens to be approved
by county voters and alter our country setting immensely. Basically,
either you believe that they will be good for the community or you don't.
It isn't that I don't see the economic benefits of having 7,000 new 
homes built (think 12 years of construction, bringing all kinds of jobs
into our recessed county). It's just that all the promises are just
that... promises.

 -> See the El Rancho San Benito Website at http://elranchosanbenito.com 

Of course they are going to promise the world. A new school or schools,
a hospital, low-income housing, etc. etc. That's fine, but I reserve 
judgement until the point that they've actually delivered. Oh, and since
most of the votes for or against DMB's El Rancho San Benito will come 
from residents of the city of Hollister, perhaps DMB can do something 
for downtown Hollister? Like funding small businesses or putting up 
money to speed up the highway 25 bipass?

Anyway, that isn't why I'm writing today. During that heated conversation,
we went over to the DMB website and I noticed a broken link. Wanting to
report the problem, I looked around for a webmaster address and didn't 
find one. So I went to the 'contact' page and reported the problem there.
I never got a response - this is, unfortunately, the norm in the web-age.

However, I just received an invitation to an open house that will occur
next week at our Vet's building. The invitation came to my email address
along with a disclaimer that I received this mail because I signed up for
their newsletter. The problem is, I never signed up to get the newsletter,
all I did was report an issue with their website. Lie number one.

DMB Associates has really made no bones about campaigning for our support
and our vote for allowing them to build their monstrous development on 
some of the most picturesque hills in our region. But their email makes it
official, as the email didn't come from DMB Associates at all, but rather
from a paid service for sending out, tracking, and reporting on email
advertising campaigns. To understand how the tracking works, you 
can check your email headers and you'll see unique message id's and 
return paths - this let's DMB Associates know who read the mail and who
didn't (your name and email is associated with a given id):

From Dorothy's headers:
  Return-Path: <TheElRanchoSanBenitoTeam-44460I24795983@campaignmonitor.com>

From Paul's headers:
  Return-Path: <TheElRanchoSanBenitoTeam-44460I24795986@campaignmonitor.com>

In the message body, you are directed to click on a link to a webpage if
you are having trouble reading the email. This message will only be displayed
if you are using a plain-text email reader, as opposed to an HTML email 
reader. This URL is specifically created to know exactly who you are when 
you click on it:

From the email from DMB to Dorothy:
  http://dmb.cmail1.com/.aspx/e/44460/24795983/

From the email from DMB to Paul:
  http://dmb.cmail1.com/.aspx/e/44460/24795986/

The thing that really gets me is the use of covert web URL's inside the 
message body. What I mean here is that the URL text shown isn't the same
URL you get sent to by clicking on it. This tactic is used in many email
schemes such as emails masquerading as Citibank or PayPal trying to get
you to turn over personal information. My email client (Mozilla 
Thunderbird) even identified this message from DMB Associates as a 
probable scam. The covert URL is the link the message invites you to 
click on to view the draft proposal for El Rancho San Benito - available
for public comment. Here's the code:

<p align="center" style="line-height: 20px;"><font color="#71522F" 
size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">A draft proposal 
for El Rancho San Benito <br>
is now ready for public review and comment at <br>
<a href="http://dmb.cmail1.com/.aspx/l/44460/24795983
/www.elranchosanbenito.com">www.elranchosanbenito.com</a> Community 
</font><br>

Well, that's a mess to look at. But the key thing to notice is that the
highlighted text is "www.elranchosanbenito.com" while the URL you are 
really getting sent to is a license-plated page at "dmb.cmail1.com". In
other words, lie number two. And just to show that clicking on that
link lets DMB Associates know exactly who you are, here are the license
plates for both Dorothy and Paul:

Dorothy:
  http://dmb.cmail1.com/.aspx/l/44460/24795983/www.elranchosanbenito.com
Paul:
  http://dmb.cmail1.com/.aspx/l/44460/24795986/www.elranchosanbenito.com

My DMB license plate is 24795986. Okay, so this license-plate thing
is actually a pretty common tactic these days. While I think it is quite
underhanded, I can also understand why businesses succumb to the temptation
to use them: they provide for great statistics on the success or failure
of individual advertising campaigns. The really underhanded (or
really ignorant) thing that DMB is doing in their email invitation 
is hiding the true URL from the displayed URL.

Either DMB Associates has no idea what they are doing, or they think we
back-country citizens can't think for ourselves and won't notice wool
pulled over our eyes. Well, I'm noticing, and I have confidence that a
majority of Hollister and San Benito County citizens are noticing too.
Whether by design or accident, DMB Associates have already been deceptive.

Are we sure we want to wait until they occupy our beautiful countryside
before we figure out that they are just another large corporation,
that the only community they care about is their small circle of 
shareholders? Does an infusion of money really bring about community?
Think about it. We still have time to say no to this.

© 2006 Paul McNett       [/Personal] permanent link