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Tina Vickery
SC WIGenWeb Project
_______
Subj: [WIGEN-L] Family Discovery jumps to Prodigy
Date: 3/9/01 1:04:09 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: zorblitz(a)mindspring.com (zorblitz)
Reply-to: WIGEN-L(a)rootsweb.com
To: WIGEN-L(a)rootsweb.com
True to their history, Family Discovery was getting "heat" for their
business (mis) practices and have now jumped to Prodigy and are also
using PayPal (info from the Belgium list). Their last server is thought
to have dumped them after receiving numerous spam complaints. This
company is thought to go to Gen sites of all kinds and pick the e-mail
address off them to use for spam mailings of the $49.00 "service". In
their spam, they say that another Gen site has suggested that they
contact the recipient, when the original gen site does not even know it
has been used for the addresses. Please consider encoding the e-mail
addresses on sites into the name so they can not be easily picked off
the pages. It means an extra "click" for visitors but the spammer's
programs only "see" a name and no addresses to pick up. Here is the
latest followed by a summery of recent events for anyone who wants a
quick update on the matter.
It looks like the fictitious Family Discovery genealogy service has
moved to Prodigy now. I contacted Prodigy this morning and they have
asked that anyone who receives solicitation email from
familydiscovery.com to take the following steps immediately:
1) Forward the entire Family Discovery message to: abuse(a)prodigy.com
2) Include the following information (most of which was provided by
Rita from the Oconto County, WI list):
Please note that the attached message is now being sent through your ISP
service. They have been reported to various State Attorney General's
Office on computer fraud, but it is hard to catch up with them.
Originally the "company" linked to free information sites and placed the
pages in "frames" so that it looked like it was their own work.
Customers paid for that information. The scam, now, is paying for the
free information links and then they "move" frequently and leave their
paid-up customers without services.
3) Post these same instructions on any other lists today so that
Prodigy has a better chance of finding the spammers.