FYI
Mark Mann
Moderator, InHunt and InWells mailing lists
Coordinator, Huntington County InGenWeb
This has been going on for nearly six months. There is a web page
dedicated
to reporting details about this operation. Gene Olson has taken it
upon
himself to try and shut them dowm.
See:
http://www.compuright.net/familydiscovery/
>_______
>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.