Just moments ago, I received what appeared to be a more or less legitimate, yet still unsolicited, advert for software development outsourcing company in India. The subject heading asked for my discretion, perhaps because they felt it was a professional thing to ask. After all, who wants to release to the public that you're going to oursource your software development activities? I was willing to forgive the spam, for it was well targeted and pertinent to my skill sets (I am a software developer, and have, in the past, run several companies). But, then, something caught my eye, which completely invalidated my respect for the sender. I've decided, therefore, to give this message all the discretion it deserved.

None.

Please find below the message I received in e-mail, unchanged except to remove HTML mark-up:

Dear Sir/Madam,

3w-outsource is a leading software development company in India providing Offshore Software Development Services & solutions.

Our services are

• outsourcing software development India
• Web Development India
• Product Development
• E-strategy Consulting
• Web-Enablement Designing
• Offshore Application development
• .Net Development India
• PHP Development
• Multimedia and Design Solutions
• Email marketing services (capable to send you 5000-10000 quality contact emails addresses per week of your interested area from your country).

3w-outsource is a leading customized process-driven software solutions provider based in India.

Kindly let me know, if you are interested for any of our services.

Kind Regards
Sunita
Marketing Director (3w-outsource)
A-4 Vidyva Vihar Padmnabhpur Durg
Chhattisgarh
India
+917882344623
Email: sunita@3w-outsource.com
Website: www.3w-outsource.com

Let's tear this apart, shall we?

• Poor grasp of the English language. They know enough to communicate, but not enough to make a great impression. Punctuation is missing, syntax errors, and more. This suggests an uneducated group of people, either trying to become big in the market, or a bunch of shucksters.
• How does Product Development differ from Web Development for an web-presence consultant? And, for that matter, what exactly does Web Development India mean, and how does it differ from normal Web Development?
• E-strategy Consulting — this is interesting. If you visit their home page, you'll notice a plurality of malformed HTML rendering. Do you want to trust your company's web strategy to a service provider incapable of properly utilizing their own web resources?
• Web-Enablement Designing — for real? This makes so little sense in any context I can think of that I can't even begin to dissect it. Is Enablement even a word?
• Offshore Application development — how does this differ from outsourcing software development India?
• PHP Development — Why no India suffix here? Does this have some subtle difference in meaning compared to the other bullets?
• Multimedia and Design Solutions — What multimedia solutions could these folks offer which nobody else does? With today's infrastructure and available delivery methods, multimedia exists as a largely solved problem. Also note the conjunction — what design solutions are referenced here? Or, are they talking about solutions to a design? It's ambiguous.
• Email marketing services (capable to send you 5000-10000 quality contact emails addresses per week …) — This is the kicker, folks. These guys are bona fide, self-admitting spammers! It's pretty self-evident from this bullet alone that they invest a large amount of their time collecting e-mail addresses from people who respond to them, scrape screens, or syphon through UseNet or e-mail, and then sell (for a good sum of cash, I'm willing to bet) these addresses to businesses.

These factors, taken individually, would not have raised much of an alarm. Together, however, the lack of basic English proficiency expected in a business setting combined with the self-promotion of e-mail address mailing lists combines to tell me these folks are the screen-scraping arm of a spamming outfit. Inasmuch, one should perform as little business with these folks as possible. If you receive an e-mail from this outfit, do not respond to their message; doing so will just add your e-mail address to one of their quality address lists — quality, in this case, means that a human being reads the mail.