Scantlings

Question for all: There is a social media site for physicians called "Doximity." It is supposedly built around a secure email system for confidential info and if you Google them there is lots of positive industry press about their business model and what a wonderful success they are. However, their MO is to crawl the web for associations between docs--institutional, med school, training programs, etc.-- and send people email that falsely appears to come from those connections. Suprisingly there is virtually no mention of this, but it's very sleazy and annoying. You can't opt out of these emails and I have written to them several times asking them to stop. I finally lost patience this weekend when I got an invite from a much loved colleague who died tragically from cancer last spring and whose absence is still raw around here.

I think this might be minor grist for some journalist's mill. Do any of you movers and shakers know anyone?

Thanks.

Assholes! I ain't no mover or shaker.

You can try Report Spam
Forward unwanted or deceptive messages to:

the Federal Trade Commission at spam@uce.gov. Be sure to include the complete spam email.
your email provider. At the top of the message, state that you're complaining about being spammed. Some email services have buttons that allow you to mark messages as junk mail or report them spam.
the sender's email provider, if you can tell who it is. Most web mail providers and ISPs want to cut off spammers who abuse their system. Again, make sure to include the entire spam email and say that you're complaining about spam.
If you try to unsubscribe from an email list and your request is not honored, file a complaint with the FTC.

TheOffice wrote:Assholes! I ain't no mover or shaker.

You can try Report Spam
Forward unwanted or deceptive messages to:

the Federal Trade Commission at spam@uce.gov. Be sure to include the complete spam email.
your email provider. At the top of the message, state that you're complaining about being spammed. Some email services have buttons that allow you to mark messages as junk mail or report them spam.
the sender's email provider, if you can tell who it is. Most web mail providers and ISPs want to cut off spammers who abuse their system. Again, make sure to include the entire spam email and say that you're complaining about spam.
If you try to unsubscribe from an email list and your request is not honored, file a complaint with the FTC.

Thanks, Joel. I think this goes a bit beyond spam and might be slightly more newsworthy, but I will certainly take it to the regulatory authorities if no one is interested in a public shaming.

I know, but its the best I've got.

Eric,

I'd start with the CEO, who is Jeff Tangney. He doesn't put his email on the company web site - a telling admission in my view. You can reach him on LinkedIn here: HERE

If the CEO doesn't respond, then I'd take it to the Board, see below. The Board will NOT want a twitter binge going on calling their company a web-crawling spam puking pile of Sxxxxx. The problem is that the guy below, who is a co-founder of LinkedIn is quite proud of having built a web crawling auto-spam machine. So he might not be very interested in your opinion. But Gil Kilman (below) is a decent guy at Interwest Partners, as is Rebecca Lynn at Canvas Venturs.

If the CEO is non-responsive, I'd hit the Board Members. They are pretty easy to reach. They are:
Konstantin Guericke - a co-founder of LinkedIn and you can reach him HERE
Gil Kilman - On LinkedIn HERE
Rebecca Lynn - On LinkedIn HERE

BeauV wrote:Eric,

I'd start with the CEO, who is Jeff Tangney. He doesn't put his email on the company web site - a telling admission in my view. You can reach him on LinkedIn here: HERE

If the CEO doesn't respond, then I'd take it to the Board, see below. The Board will NOT want a twitter binge going on calling their company a web-crawling spam puking pile of Sxxxxx. The problem is that the guy below, who is a co-founder of LinkedIn is quite proud of having built a web crawling auto-spam machine. So he might not be very interested in your opinion. But Gil Kilman (below) is a decent guy at Interwest Partners, as is Rebecca Lynn at Canvas Venturs.

If the CEO is non-responsive, I'd hit the Board Members. They are pretty easy to reach. They are:
Konstantin Guericke - a co-founder of LinkedIn and you can reach him HERE
Gil Kilman - On LinkedIn HERE
Rebecca Lynn - On LinkedIn HERE

Thank you, Beau!

Also shows how fucking stupid doctors are.

Premium Linkedin (another source of inbox garbage I sorely regret signing up for), which I don't have, seems to be required to send messages to people who aren't among your contacts, so I'm going to continue to try to find a bored tech reporter.

Brian Leslie, Jan 17, 16:42 PST:
Dr. Wassermann,
Thank you for the update.
We removed Dr. Manganiello.
At one time he registered with us and invited you to be his Colleague which is why you received the message.
I've removed your profile from the system so you will not receive any future messaging from us.
Take care.
Brian Leslie
Support Specialist
Doximity Technical Support

Vince was very ill for several months with pancreatic cancer and died almost exactly a year ago. He was a pulmonologist and lab-based investigator, whom I basically knew from the elevator. Neither of us would have had the slightest reason to join something like this thing. let alone connect on it. These guys have to go.

Docs néed to be careful, there is a lot of private information available in the medical registration and certification system.

In the pre IT days, there were quite a few examples of identity theft of doctors at our local teaching hospital, just people joining the dots in all the publicly available data on staff with clinical appointments.

Orestes Munn wrote:Premium Linkedin (another source of inbox garbage I sorely regret signing up for), which I don't have, seems to be required to send messages to people who aren't among your contacts, so I'm going to continue to try to find a bored tech reporter.

Eric, typically what one does is join LinkedIn under an assumed name, "friend" these folks so you can send them email, then resign the account.

Also, the VCs on the list can be reached through their VC firms.

Gil Kilman -http://www.interwest.com/partners/gil-kliman - you may have to dig a bit for a direct email, or just call and talk to him.
Rebecca Lynn - rebecca@canvas.vc <-- is her email address. Her firm is here: http://www.canvas.vc/team-member/rebecca-lynn/

BeauV wrote:

Orestes Munn wrote:Premium Linkedin (another source of inbox garbage I sorely regret signing up for), which I don't have, seems to be required to send messages to people who aren't among your contacts, so I'm going to continue to try to find a bored tech reporter.

Eric, typically what one does is join LinkedIn under an assumed name, "friend" these folks so you can send them email, then resign the account.

Also, the VCs on the list can be reached through their VC firms.

Gil Kilman -http://www.interwest.com/partners/gil-kliman - you may have to dig a bit for a direct email, or just call and talk to him.
Rebecca Lynn - rebecca@canvas.vc <-- is her email address. Her firm is here: http://www.canvas.vc/team-member/rebecca-lynn/

Interesting tactic, but I doubt anyone would friend me unless i impersonated someone interesting and constructed a whole fake profile. That's not exactly a good way to start out an email relationship, is it? I get lots of friend requests most of which seem pretty random and which I ignore.

The worst ones are from characters made up by predatory journals. They are always patently fake and have huge lists of friends from academia. Social networking really brings out the stupid.

Latest chapter: my door prize for complaining was being added to the mailing list for something called MyLife.

Orestes Munn wrote:

BeauV wrote:

Orestes Munn wrote:Premium Linkedin (another source of inbox garbage I sorely regret signing up for), which I don't have, seems to be required to send messages to people who aren't among your contacts, so I'm going to continue to try to find a bored tech reporter.

Eric, typically what one does is join LinkedIn under an assumed name, "friend" these folks so you can send them email, then resign the account.

Also, the VCs on the list can be reached through their VC firms.

Gil Kilman -http://www.interwest.com/partners/gil-kliman - you may have to dig a bit for a direct email, or just call and talk to him.
Rebecca Lynn - rebecca@canvas.vc <-- is her email address. Her firm is here: http://www.canvas.vc/team-member/rebecca-lynn/

Interesting tactic, but I doubt anyone would friend me unless i impersonated someone interesting and constructed a whole fake profile. That's not exactly a good way to start out an email relationship, is it? I get lots of friend requests most of which seem pretty random and which I ignore.

The worst ones are from characters made up by predatory journals. They are always patently fake and have huge lists of friends from academia. Social networking really brings out the stupid.

Latest chapter: my door prize for complaining was being added to the mailing list for something called MyLife.

OM, you can imagine the amount of SPAM I get with a tag like CEO on my LinkedIn and Facebook profiles. The alternative solution is to build an email rule that just vectors all of this rubbish into the trash without showing it to you. I can help you with that if you like. Which email client do you use? It's different in each of the systems. (BTW, Google gmail does a great job of tossing SPAM without you ever knowing it.)

Eric, typically what one does is join LinkedIn under an assumed name, "friend" these folks so you can send them email, then resign the account.

I'm shocked, shocked at this advice. Surely it's a violation of the Terms of Service!

BeauV wrote:

Orestes Munn wrote:

BeauV wrote:

Orestes Munn wrote:Premium Linkedin (another source of inbox garbage I sorely regret signing up for), which I don't have, seems to be required to send messages to people who aren't among your contacts, so I'm going to continue to try to find a bored tech reporter.

Eric, typically what one does is join LinkedIn under an assumed name, "friend" these folks so you can send them email, then resign the account.

Also, the VCs on the list can be reached through their VC firms.

Gil Kilman -http://www.interwest.com/partners/gil-kliman - you may have to dig a bit for a direct email, or just call and talk to him.
Rebecca Lynn - rebecca@canvas.vc <-- is her email address. Her firm is here: http://www.canvas.vc/team-member/rebecca-lynn/

Interesting tactic, but I doubt anyone would friend me unless i impersonated someone interesting and constructed a whole fake profile. That's not exactly a good way to start out an email relationship, is it? I get lots of friend requests most of which seem pretty random and which I ignore.

The worst ones are from characters made up by predatory journals. They are always patently fake and have huge lists of friends from academia. Social networking really brings out the stupid.

Latest chapter: my door prize for complaining was being added to the mailing list for something called MyLife.

OM, you can imagine the amount of SPAM I get with a tag like CEO on my LinkedIn and Facebook profiles. The alternative solution is to build an email rule that just vectors all of this rubbish into the trash without showing it to you. I can help you with that if you like. Which email client do you use? It's different in each of the systems. (BTW, Google gmail does a great job of tossing SPAM without you ever knowing it.)

My Linkedin stuff goes into a quasi-trash mailbox that I scan every month or so for anything interesting. I use a special form of my email address for that stuff, so I can see who these jerks are selling it to.

Seems like a good story. I can do some poking around. I was reminded of this guy who did a story on us, a long time ago, when we were ever so slightly willing to talk to reporters.

http://www.barrons.com/articles/SB101805213189218360

kdh wrote:Seems like a good story. I can do some poking around. I was reminded of this guy who did a story on us, a long time ago, when we were ever so slightly willing to talk to reporters.

http://www.barrons.com/articles/SB101805213189218360

Thank you, Keith. On whom did you take your terrible, brainy revenge?

Orestes Munn wrote:

kdh wrote:Seems like a good story. I can do some poking around. I was reminded of this guy who did a story on us, a long time ago, when we were ever so slightly willing to talk to reporters.

http://www.barrons.com/articles/SB101805213189218360

Thank you, Keith. On whom did you take your terrible, brainy revenge?

My business partner has worked with Pui-wing Tam, who would be great for this. We knew her at Barron's, I believe, but she's now the Technology Editor at the New York TImes. pui-wing.tam@nytimes.com.

The "brainy revenge" story was a usual one back when that was written. Quants were still a fringe group of propeller-head crazies, and our revenge was against "by the gut" stock pickers who used to laugh at us. Now they're all scrambling to hire us.

kdh wrote:

Orestes Munn wrote:

kdh wrote:Seems like a good story. I can do some poking around. I was reminded of this guy who did a story on us, a long time ago, when we were ever so slightly willing to talk to reporters.

http://www.barrons.com/articles/SB101805213189218360

Thank you, Keith. On whom did you take your terrible, brainy revenge?

My business partner has worked with Pui-wing Tam, who would be great for this. We knew her at Barron's, I believe, but she's now the Technology Editor at the New York TImes. pui-wing.tam@nytimes.com.

The "brainy revenge" story was a usual one back when that was written. Quants were still a fringe group of propeller-head crazies, and our revenge was against "by the gut" stock pickers who used to laugh at us. Now they're all scrambling to hire us.

Well, whoda thunk!

Actually, the husband of a close colleague is one and I heard of his travails back in the 90s. He never seemed to strike gold, though.

Orestes Munn wrote:

kdh wrote:

Orestes Munn wrote:

kdh wrote:Seems like a good story. I can do some poking around. I was reminded of this guy who did a story on us, a long time ago, when we were ever so slightly willing to talk to reporters.

http://www.barrons.com/articles/SB101805213189218360

Thank you, Keith. On whom did you take your terrible, brainy revenge?

My business partner has worked with Pui-wing Tam, who would be great for this. We knew her at Barron's, I believe, but she's now the Technology Editor at the New York TImes. pui-wing.tam@nytimes.com.

The "brainy revenge" story was a usual one back when that was written. Quants were still a fringe group of propeller-head crazies, and our revenge was against "by the gut" stock pickers who used to laugh at us. Now they're all scrambling to hire us.

Well, whoda thunk!

Actually, the husband of a close colleague is one and I heard of his travails back in the 90s. He never seemed to strike gold, though.

If it were easy everyone would be doing it.

I cut my teeth in finance at the big mutual fund firm here in Boston. A buddy there used to say about crashing and burning as a stock picker, "It's not a matter of 'if', Keith, but 'when'." For a small firm like ours I think longevity is the best measure of success.