Transpak Package service

[Stubakka]

http://www.mspex.net/#transpak

Anyone using this service? Thinking of trying it out wanted to get some feedback from the nation. I saw it being promoted at JNUC in one of the sessions.

its 60$ a month, seems worth it for the time it could save for most packages.

[bollman]

It looks interesting, but as most of our apps needs be in the Swedish localization (think Firefox) one wonders how they will cater to the non-english-speakers.
Also, since they seem to be quite small, and I can't really find much info on the company behind, what about the security implications?

[mm2270]

Funny. I just got an email today about this, though its the first I've ever heard of them, so I'm guessing its pretty new?
Sounds interesting, though I don't know that I fully trust it just yet. Like @bollman][/url][/url][/url, I'm slightly concerned about the security implications. This isn't the same as trusting a vendor supplied package. This is a 3rd party packaging for you. A 'man in the middle' if you will. I'd want to examine and test every package very carefully to ensure there isn't anything nefarious in them. Yeah. its a bit of tin foil hat thinking, but you can't be too careful.
I'd like to hear from people using it, so we'll probably give this a pass for now and come back later to see how its going.

I also wonder if its using something like AutoPkg behind the scenes.

[rderewianko]

Whats more interesting is how they got my email...

[mm2270]

@rderewianko - Uh, yeah, I'm wondering that too. Hmmm.

[bollman]

Hm JNUC?

[Stubakka]

Yes this was shown at JNUC during a presentation.

[krichterjr]

I just received an email from them this morning as well. I didn't think Jamf shared our emails though...

[mm2270]

They certainly shouldn't be, and I highly doubt they did. I suspect JAMF is better than that, so I'm not clear where they got our emails, but I think the pattern that's emerging here is that so far everyone who received one of their emails either attended JNUC, or was signed up to attend, like me.
Or, we're all part of the same forum, like JAMFNation.

Just not sure, but its a little suspicious...

[timhassett]

Hi Everyone, 

I wanted to respond to hopefully help answer the questions here and address the email we sent this morning. 

I am one of the principals here at MSPex, and it is our company that offers the TransPak package download service.  Many of you may know one of our other founders and chief engineer, Paul Suh, who is also quite active in the Apple technical community.

First, my apologies if you received our email and did not wish to get this.  If you unsubscribed, we will ensure not to send you any further emails.  Also, please feel free to jot me a note at tim@mspex.net if you did not unsubscribe, but would like to.  I want to address this ASAP.

We are a small team of Apple geeks and enthusiasts, and like to keep our inbox as clear as I’m sure you do.  With having over 20 years of history in the Apple world, our address book is a mix of folks we’ve worked with and interacted with on boards such as jamf nation, MacTech, MacEnterprise, Apple Consultants Network, AppleSpecialist, afp548, and others.  We also attended the jnuc, and exchanged information with many other attendees.  Aside from our team speaking at Apple events and attending Apple events throughout the year, we work with manufacturers such as Adobe, Sophos, Griffin, Promise, and others.  

We have some work to do to better organize and clean up this address book, which we are correcting now, as we want to keep our emails short, infrequent, helpful, and to folks who want to receive them.  

Again, my apologies.  We want to be a helpful service, and not an email nuisance.  

-Tim Hassett
tim@mspex.net

[donmontalvo]

Rule #1, never, ever, do business with a SPAM'er.

SPAM'er: You have not responded to the "How did they get my email address?" question.

Done.

[rderewianko]

agreed @donmontalvo

[mm2270]

@donmontalvo][/url

Generally I would agree, although its not strictly true that the question wasn't answered. From Tim Hassett's post:

With having over 20 years of history in the Apple world, our address book is a mix of folks we’ve worked with and interacted with on boards such as jamf nation, MacTech, MacEnterprise, Apple Consultants Network, AppleSpecialist, afp548, and others. We also attended the jnuc, and exchanged information with many other attendees.

Whether this is a satisfactory explanation is another question though. Without knowing more about who they are and what companies some of these people were with before joining up at MSPex, its hard to know how and from where they would have gotten our emails exactly. I certainly don't recall "interacting" with any of them before, but I can't be certain of that.

[ImAMacGuy]

soo.. what is it? Looked at the site but it wasn't really helpful. is it like [www.ninite.com](www.ninite.com) but for macs?
also couldn't find anything on mspex in the bbb

[CasperSally]

Agree, would like to know how they got my email.

[donmontalvo]

@mm2279 wrote:

I certainly don't recall "interacting" with any of them before, but I can't be certain of that.

My only point is this SPAM'er was not entitled to have my email address, nor is he in any position to tell me that I need to opt-out.

I've already reported this incident to the DOJ, and I encourage anyone else who received this SPAM to do the same:

http://www.justice.gov/spam.htm

Don

[arekdreyer]

If you really would like to know from where they got your email address, why not send tim@mspex.net a message with that question?

[donmontalvo]

In the interest of transparency and full disclosure, he is welcome to respond to this thread. ;)

[lkrasno]

Did they fold? can't reach the site today ?

[dmw3]

The site is up.

But my question is how do they handle licensing of apps?

Also not liking how they picked up email details.

[donmontalvo]

Their silence is deafening.

[timhassett]

Hi Everyone,

My apologies on the radio silence, as we’ve been busy behind the scenes. We took the site down for about an hour the other day to add new content, so I apologize for the temporary outage. You’ll also see a new FAQ coming up soon, which should answer many of the questions we’ve seen.

To clarify regarding our email, we took immediate corrective action in that all email addresses were permanently removed from our system, unless you specifically reached out to us asking to be on our email list.

I know you have strong feelings regarding spam. I can only say that this is not something that any of the partners at MSPex have done in the past, and is not something we’ll do in the future.

We made a mistake, and have also taken disciplinary action internally to correct this. I can only ask for your forgiveness.

And I’m here at tim@mspex.net if you ever need me.

Our core mission to be a helpful, time saving service. We are not in the business of blasting out unwanted emails, so you have my assurance that this was a single isolated incident.

-Tim

[donmontalvo]

@timhassett][/url Thanks Tim, your acknowledgement and apology are very much appreciated.

But...I still want to know where your company got my email address.

I'm sure you understand why. :)

Don

[timhassett]

@donmontalvo absolutely, I definitely understand. The short answer is that one of our folks got it from your site at donmontalvo.com. I'll also email you directly with more detail. I want to be respectful of the JAMF nation platform and its purpose. (I'll shoot you the email here in the next 10 minutes)

[CasperSally]

For what it's worth, there's no CasperSally.com for you to get my work address.

[timhassett]

@CasperSally Understood. I'm happy to field any questions on this at tim@mspex.net as I want to be mindful of the purpose of the jamf nation community site here.

[donmontalvo]

@timhassett OK, I removed "Google my name for contact info." from my jamfnation profile. Incredible.