I have a strong distrust of most marketing and sales individuals. I hate evaluating software and getting a dozen calls or emails from some overzealous, inside-sales weenie. For this reason, I usually use bogus information when I fill out the obligatory form requesting the software that I want to play with. Lately, a lot more companies have been ignoring my queries for eval software. While I’m pleased to not be receiving calls or emails, I would appreciate the actual software. Today, while waiting (not too patiently) for my link to come through, I went through the email looking for some clue as to why I wasn’t selected to play with their software. In the HTML, I note a line like this (obfuscated somewhat and using ‘(’ and ‘)’ instead of angle brackets).
(IMG xsrc=”http://somelargesoftwarecompany.com/mk/auth?_ED=abcdefghijklmnopqrstuv
&_esniff=true” HEIGHT=”1″ WIDTH=”1″)
What’s that? Why is HEIGHT and WIDTH equal to 1? How will I ever see that?
So, the natural next question is: What happens when the web browser (or email client) requests that image. Well, it turns out it’s not a real image. It’s size is 0 bytes and the error code is “204 NoContent”.
I add a single quote to the abcdefghijklmnopqrstuv string. Now, I’m getting an error message like:
“MarketFirst encountered an error while processing your request.”
So, what’s the deal with that little, bitty image? Well, it turns out that I’m not supposed to see that little, bitty image. That little snippet is part of a marketing software (MarketFirst) which tracks when and where the email is opened (ooooh, I am *so* hating marketing guys right now).
To see other companies using the marketfirst software, google:
MarketFirst error inurl:”/mk/”
Even more fun, google:
MarketFirst inurl:”/mk/” ODBC error
Wanna try it yourself. Check out:
http://cdcsoftware-marketing.com/mk/get/ca_m1_online_demo_registration?MP=M1COM_HOMEPAGE
You’ll even get your own email which tracks back to their database…call it marketer on marketer crime.
Now, if I could just get a MarketFirst demo evaluation ;)
!Dmitry