(no subject)
May. 3rd, 2004 08:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cabbitzillaWell, I did my good deed for the month.
As I was sifting through the email that made it past Yahoo!'s spam filters, I happened across an email with the simplistic subject line of 'hey'. The from field said it was someone named Herbert. I skipped over it on my delete pass; I've known several folks with the surname of Herbert, and two others with it as their given name. I seriously doubted it was any of them, but figured it was worth trying.
When I got to it, it turned out to be a spam advertisement of yet another affiliate of the buttheads at File Sharing Network (NO, I'm not going to hotlink them... they're a pain in the butt)... but it was the URL that caught my attention. Someone was using a secondary page link... nestled in under the Phillips Memorial Baptist Church (Rhode Island) ... and probably stealing their bandwidth as well.
I looked at the church's website; it's clean and functional, without a lot of silly frills. These folks take thier work seriously, and that tone is reflected by their website. And while I'll admit to having some SERIOUS issues with certain individual Baptists, my stance there is similar to a lovely midwestern dolly's stance on Catholicism. While the Baptist stance wants nothing to do with me or with people like me, I still believe there's a good purpose being served for an awful lot of folks. And the more I flipped between spam and church, the angrier I got.
It should be noted that it's raining today, and rained most of the night before. I'm typically in a complete haze of pain and cobwebs, and up to the opening of this email today was the same. But getting angry and letting the rage flow... that burns the haze away pretty quickly. So all of you can thank a bandwidth-stealing, domain-poisoning spammer for me being awake and aware.
I went through the church's website again, this time looking for a contact point. After reading every page and poking at the HTML source, the only email I could find was for a member of the committee that was reviewing applicants for a pastor position. It wasn't what I was looking for, exactly, but I figured it would do. I sent an email off to the gentleman, with the spam mail stuck to the bottom. I honestly didn't expect a response, but I figured that this poor unassuming church should at least be warned that someone was leeching through them.
Imagine my surprise when, within two hours of sending the email off, I got a response from the gentleman from the committee. While his answer was short, it at least gives me the hope that something will be done. It won't hurt my feelings to see a spammer shot down in flames... and maybe give the church a bit of help rooting out their leech.
*shrugs* Maybe it'll help, and maybe it won't. I tried, and did what I could. My sense of fair play takes issue with someone being used unwilling or unwitting as a tool.
As for me, the haze is slowly rolling back in as the anger abates. I wonder if this is how Hulk feels.
As I was sifting through the email that made it past Yahoo!'s spam filters, I happened across an email with the simplistic subject line of 'hey'. The from field said it was someone named Herbert. I skipped over it on my delete pass; I've known several folks with the surname of Herbert, and two others with it as their given name. I seriously doubted it was any of them, but figured it was worth trying.
When I got to it, it turned out to be a spam advertisement of yet another affiliate of the buttheads at File Sharing Network (NO, I'm not going to hotlink them... they're a pain in the butt)... but it was the URL that caught my attention. Someone was using a secondary page link... nestled in under the Phillips Memorial Baptist Church (Rhode Island) ... and probably stealing their bandwidth as well.
I looked at the church's website; it's clean and functional, without a lot of silly frills. These folks take thier work seriously, and that tone is reflected by their website. And while I'll admit to having some SERIOUS issues with certain individual Baptists, my stance there is similar to a lovely midwestern dolly's stance on Catholicism. While the Baptist stance wants nothing to do with me or with people like me, I still believe there's a good purpose being served for an awful lot of folks. And the more I flipped between spam and church, the angrier I got.
It should be noted that it's raining today, and rained most of the night before. I'm typically in a complete haze of pain and cobwebs, and up to the opening of this email today was the same. But getting angry and letting the rage flow... that burns the haze away pretty quickly. So all of you can thank a bandwidth-stealing, domain-poisoning spammer for me being awake and aware.
I went through the church's website again, this time looking for a contact point. After reading every page and poking at the HTML source, the only email I could find was for a member of the committee that was reviewing applicants for a pastor position. It wasn't what I was looking for, exactly, but I figured it would do. I sent an email off to the gentleman, with the spam mail stuck to the bottom. I honestly didn't expect a response, but I figured that this poor unassuming church should at least be warned that someone was leeching through them.
Imagine my surprise when, within two hours of sending the email off, I got a response from the gentleman from the committee. While his answer was short, it at least gives me the hope that something will be done. It won't hurt my feelings to see a spammer shot down in flames... and maybe give the church a bit of help rooting out their leech.
*shrugs* Maybe it'll help, and maybe it won't. I tried, and did what I could. My sense of fair play takes issue with someone being used unwilling or unwitting as a tool.
As for me, the haze is slowly rolling back in as the anger abates. I wonder if this is how Hulk feels.
