Gartner demands scam 'analyst' cease and desist

Analyst house Gartner has been angered by a spam email purporting to come from within its organisation promoting the services of a US company called Oxcyon.

The email appears to be from a division of the analyst house called GartnerResearcher.com - only that domain is not registered to anybody nor is it in anyway affiliated to the real Gartner organisation.

The email praises products from Oxcyon, whose website claims it offers content management and ECM solutions. However, a spokesman for Gartner said he has not heard of the organisation and insisted the email is bogus and in no way represents an endorsement of those products from the analyst house.

silicon.com alerted the analyst house to this scam after receiving the email.

Gartner later confirmed it had issued a 'cease and desist' notice to the email originator and Oxcyon.

A spokesman for Gartner told silicon.com: "We've contacted the email sender and Oxcyon and demanded they stop this immediately. We have also notified our legal team who are looking into it right now.

"We don't know whether this has been sanctioned by Oxcyon. They may not know that a company they have contracted to market their products is acting in this way but companies need to know how their products are marketed and this really isn't the way."

Sam Keller, CEO of Oxcyon, told silicon.com he had no knowledge of the email.

He said: "We are not in the practice of sending out email broadcasts and we are certainly not a spammer. If there is any involvement of our marketing team – and I'm not saying there is – then I'm keen to get to the bottom of it."

Keller told silicon.com the company works with a large number of partners and resellers but added that he fully intends to discover the source of the bogus spam.

Oxcyon is currently investigating the source of the email, he said.