Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 10:40:11 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Sherry Peruzzi Subject: Re: A STRONG NOTE OF PROTEST MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Denise Ryan wrote: > It is possible that @home.com has sold your address to direct marketing > without your knowledge > > Email and Acquisition Marketing Services MatchLogic takes permission-based > marketing to a new level with our DeliverE email, online promotions, and > lead generation services. With them, new and current opt-in consumers who > have expressed interest in specific products/services are sent customized > content That's a possibility, although I receive a heck of a lot of spam and I have never opted in to anything connected with @home, nor have I ever expressed interest in get-rich-quick schemes, XXX teenage babes, hot stock tips, penis lengthening or strengthening ... or anything else, for that matter. There's a clear difference in appearance and content between spam and legitimate commercial e-mail. The messages from Buy.com, Amazon.com, and the very, very few others that I have opted-in for don't resemble in any way, shape or form the ones on the above-mentioned and similar subjects that I'm inundated with every day. And I don't believe the purveyors of that trash are either willing or able to pay the kind of money @home would be asking for customer lists. It's also possible that spammers have combed through the MDOsprey archives and harvested addresses. They have agents that crawl the Web looking for addresses; their programs may well have become sophisticated enough to detect an archive (especially if the page name contains the word archive) and search through the messages culling e-mail addresses. But like me, you're a Comcast customer, Kurt. My belief has long been that @home's servers have been hacked, and the addresses stolen and then sold to spammers. Some of the spam I get has an alphabetical list of "To" addresses with mine somewhere in the middle. They're not just hopeful lists of random words, because addresses like books27 and bookxyz are in there too. @home has denied that anything like this has happened, but the discussions on the @home newsgroups indicate otherwise. But the good news is that although Kurt and I and all the other @home users will have to go through the nuisance of an address change in a couple of months, it should -- at least temporarily -- put a stop to all that spam. To make this post on topic ... I was out yesterday morning with all the other birders searching for the Western Tanager but was disappointed. After a couple of hours of waiting, watching and hoping, we all gave up and left. Sherry Peruzzi Howard County bookworms@home.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================