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Is anyody being deluged by Lert emails tonight? I received 10 of them so far about the Pams Frozen Berries Hepatitis A issue. FFS 
Lert's system is either broken or being hacked and hijacked. Unsubscribe function doesn't seem to work so now waiting for a reply to my 'cease and desist' reply to them.
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their facebook page acknowledges the problem
https://www.facebook.com/lertinfo
I assume they are genuine and not scammy
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I've been contacted by the operators directly (following a further 26+ emails overnight) and have been manually unsubscribed from their system. Their US server seems to have been hijacked. No idea what Facebook has to say on the matter as we avoid FB due to the security risks it presents for an online trader like us. Seems Lert's situation would perhaps confirm my concerns in that respect.
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there FB post is below...
Lert Email Issues update;
FIRSTLY, We're resorting to Facebook to get alerts out. Please mention tis to tour friends. The problem is you will not see alerts through Facebook immediately and many will not even see them. It's why we don't usually use it for alerts.
Sorry for the delay getting back to you. We’ve been working on the issue overnight and have a backlog of people to reply to plus the weather is kicking in.
We have been advised by Hostek, our email provider, the previous problem with emails at their end was fixed. When we tried it the same issue occurred. We're still working with them.
Unsubscribing may stop the repeats but not guaranteed. When we get it truly sorted we can reactivate you and advise. The problem doesn't happen with everyone for some reason.
If you can’t unsubscribe it is usually because of your internet service provider address. Some like @hotmail and @me, have an issue for some reason. Just contact us .
It may be an hour or so before we reply due to the whole situation of alerting, fixing the issue and replying to people.
Our sincere apologies.
Regards
Stuart, Derek and Ashley
Lert Info directors
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They've also now resorted to posting alerts on Twitter. A few typos in that FB post (assumed you copy/pasted it) but these guys have had a big night by the sounds of it so only to be expected.
I keep a close watch on weather via Weatherwatch and other important alerts are usually posted on Neighbourly (from Stuff) so Lert is a bit surplus to requirements for us and we probably won't resubscribe.
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(05-10-2022, 08:38 AM)harm_less Wrote: No idea what Facebook has to say on the matter as we avoid FB due to the security risks it presents for an online trader like us. Seems Lert's situation would perhaps confirm my concerns in that respect. A lot of businesses do rely on social media for advertising. Could you expand on the " security risks it presents for an online trader" as it affects yourselves?
Genuinely interested, I had a client recently whose business relied on instagram for several years, built up quite a following, invested a chunk of change on professional photography etc, and a few months back the insta account was compromised and they missed the security email from instagram to say the email address had been changed. Now they have no access to it at all.
Enable 2FA folks...
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(05-10-2022, 07:00 PM)king1 Wrote: (05-10-2022, 08:38 AM)harm_less Wrote: No idea what Facebook has to say on the matter as we avoid FB due to the security risks it presents for an online trader like us. Seems Lert's situation would perhaps confirm my concerns in that respect. A lot of businesses do rely on social media for advertising. Could you expand on the "security risks it presents for an online trader" as it affects yourselves?
Genuinely interested, I had a client recently whose business relied on instagram for several years, built up quite a following, invested a chunk of change on professional photography etc, and a few months back the insta account was compromised and they missed the security email from instagram to say the email address had been changed. Now they have no access to it at all.
Enable 2FA folks... A friend who has a working life of involvement with large scale petro-chem project management was told years ago by an IT tech colleague that "if you on FB it will enable me to be inside your computer within an hour". Since that time FB has embedded itself into so many online activities and website accesses I suspect the situation has not improved, and is probably far more invasive. The amount of control that FB attempts to take over your online activities scares me basically and my trust levels in regard to their business model are very low.
Having suffered a DDoS attack on our website last year and so experienced being 'hacked' and the remedial action we were forced to undertake I'm not interested in potentially opening doors to another such invasion. We have a number of trade customers who derive substantial sales volumes from their FB and IG profiles, and then purchase from us their base materials for manufacturing. Benefitting from others' FB presence without our actually doing so ourselves is a win-win IMO.
Likewise I prefer self ownership of digital content such as website selling platforms and music content. As your IG experience proves, accessing online content via a SaaS provider puts you in a very vulnerable position if that provider misbehaves or suffers damage to their system. That's why we own our website design in full (rather than using Shopify) and I have in excess of 1,000 CDs ripped to HD (and rarely use Spotify). Similarly I can't imagine relinquishing ownership of our private car in favour of adopting a TaaS (Transport as a Service) lifestyle in the foreseeable future, especially in light of our rural location, but economic logic may well require a rethink of this position in the coming years. Time will tell.
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06-10-2022, 02:47 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-10-2022, 02:54 PM by king1.)
(06-10-2022, 02:30 PM)harm_less Wrote: (05-10-2022, 07:00 PM)king1 Wrote: A lot of businesses do rely on social media for advertising. Could you expand on the "security risks it presents for an online trader" as it affects yourselves?
Genuinely interested, I had a client recently whose business relied on instagram for several years, built up quite a following, invested a chunk of change on professional photography etc, and a few months back the insta account was compromised and they missed the security email from instagram to say the email address had been changed. Now they have no access to it at all.
Enable 2FA folks... A friend who has a working life of involvement with large scale petro-chem project management was told years ago by an IT tech colleague that "if you on FB it will enable me to be inside your computer within an hour". Since that time FB has embedded itself into so many online activities and website accesses I suspect the situation has not improved, and is probably far more invasive. The amount of control that FB attempts to take over your online activities scares me basically and my trust levels in regard to their business model are very low.
Having suffered a DDoS attack on our website last year and so experienced being 'hacked' and the remedial action we were forced to undertake I'm not interested in potentially opening doors to another such invasion. We have a number of trade customers who derive substantial sales volumes from their FB and IG profiles, and then purchase from us their base materials for manufacturing. Benefitting from others' FB presence without our actually doing so ourselves is a win-win IMO.
Likewise I prefer self ownership of digital content such as website selling platforms and music content. As your IG experience proves, accessing online content via a SaaS provider puts you in a very vulnerable position if that provider misbehaves or suffers damage to their system. That's why we own our website design in full (rather than using Shopify) and I have in excess of 1,000 CDs ripped to HD (and rarely use Spotify). Similarly I can't imagine relinquishing ownership of our private car in favour of adopting a TaaS (Transport as a Service) lifestyle in the foreseeable future, especially in light of our rural location, but economic logic may well require a rethink of this position in the coming years. Time will tell. I do agree with much of what you say, when stuff is out of your control you are literally in the poo when the shit hits the fan... not mention the ongoing subscription costs
Another one I see reasonably frequently is businesses that let their web developers host their email (or worse the domain name) on behalf... That can be a major effort getting that back under control.
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(06-10-2022, 02:47 PM)king1 Wrote: (06-10-2022, 02:30 PM)harm_less Wrote: A friend who has a working life of involvement with large scale petro-chem project management was told years ago by an IT tech colleague that "if you on FB it will enable me to be inside your computer within an hour". Since that time FB has embedded itself into so many online activities and website accesses I suspect the situation has not improved, and is probably far more invasive. The amount of control that FB attempts to take over your online activities scares me basically and my trust levels in regard to their business model are very low.
Having suffered a DDoS attack on our website last year and so experienced being 'hacked' and the remedial action we were forced to undertake I'm not interested in potentially opening doors to another such invasion. We have a number of trade customers who derive substantial sales volumes from their FB and IG profiles, and then purchase from us their base materials for manufacturing. Benefitting from others' FB presence without our actually doing so ourselves is a win-win IMO.
Likewise I prefer self ownership of digital content such as website selling platforms and music content. As your IG experience proves, accessing online content via a SaaS provider puts you in a very vulnerable position if that provider misbehaves or suffers damage to their system. That's why we own our website design in full (rather than using Shopify) and I have in excess of 1,000 CDs ripped to HD (and rarely use Spotify). Similarly I can't imagine relinquishing ownership of our private car in favour of adopting a TaaS (Transport as a Service) lifestyle in the foreseeable future, especially in light of our rural location, but economic logic may well require a rethink of this position in the coming years. Time will tell. I do agree with much of what you say, when stuff is out of your control you are literally in the poo when the shit hits the fan... not mention the ongoing subscription costs
Another one I see reasonably frequently is businesses that let their web developers host their email (or worse the domain name) on behalf... That can be a major effort getting that back under control. We were pressured to change over to Shopify when changing hosting provider a while back. The subscription cost of doing so was a rude shock (quite apart from the cost of virtually rebuilding our highly customised website) so the decision to move our existing website lock, stock and barrel was an easy one.
The analogy that came to mind was to sell a specialised company vehicle in favour of a hire car. And as it turned out our company vehicle is now a Polestar that has allowed us to economically cut our courier company out of significant neighbouring province deliveries of trade sized orders.
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