Fred looks at another worthless SPAM!

This rather poorly written and spelled SPAM has been circulating for the past few weeks. When you read it, it sounds like some desparate kid who is going to have his web site nuked for lack of money. But when you see where his about-to-be-nuked web site is, it doesn't add up. Angelfire is a free web hosting service similar to Tripod, Geocities, Webspawner, etc.. These hosting services offer free web hosting, but make their money by selling banner ads or pop-ups that you see when call a URL from them. So they let anyone post pages there so they can have content to attract people to the site where their ads get exposure. Poor "Chad" doesn't have to worry about his pages being nuked, at least not for lack of money. What "Chad" is really doing is hoping that his poverty story will sucker enough people to his page and click on the banner ad that he has on his rather poorly crafted page. That way he makes 20 cents per click. The hypertext points to an offshore internet casino in Nassau called "Cyberthrill," and the text is appended with a cgi script so when "his" URL is called, he supposedly gets credited 20 cents. While I have nothing against these "per click" promo schemes themselves, they DO encourage people to SPAM with at times rather outrageous lies. "Traditional" SPAM such as chain letters, investment deals, colloidial remedies, or beanie babies can be taken at face value. What these "per click" SPAMmers do is to deceive people totally and sucker them to their site. Some SPAM's offered a free upgrade to Windows 98, "Hello my name is Tom and I work for Microsoft, we have carefully selected 100,000 people to receive a free upgrade to Windows 98." You go to his page and it says, "to receive your free upgrade on-line - click here." No mention of Windows 98 on the page, but when you click, you go to the Cyberthrill offshore casino. "Tom" even forged the header to make it appear that his address was "tom@microsoft.com." "Chad" forged his to make it appear he was on AOL, but a lookup showed "Chad" was using a uu.net dialup. What was really sick was another per click SPAM that came from someone who claimed his three year old daughter had gone missing and was desparate to get help in finding his daughter. When you clicked his page, he led you into believing that it was taking you to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, but you went to Cyberthrill. We're all concerned about missing children, but I was outraged when I saw these net scum use that issue for making money. A similar per click SPAM claimed that his 7 year old daughter needed a bone marrow transplant and they were trying to raise money to send her to St. Judes Childrens Research Hospital in Memphis. Others simply said, "you won the lottery, click here to collect your winnings." Go to Dejanews and query "Cyberthrill," doesn't seem they're what they're cracked up to be. You'll see complaints about how Cyberthrill never pays anyone anyway. Did these SPAMmers ever think they were going to get a cent out of Cyberthrill? Clever scheme on their part, exploit SPAMmers, who tend to be a VERY gullible lot anyway and get them to promote their Casino site for FREE.

UPDATE: Angelfire deleted "Chad's" page within a few days of his SPAM going out. His worst nightmare has been realized, he is now deprived of the opportunity to make those billions he was dreaming of by promoting Cyberthrill. To their credit, Angelfire does make it easy to complain about SPAMvertised web pages, you simply enter the URL of the offending web page on their complaint page. Angelfire has had a lot of complaints over SPAMvertised pages, at least in this case they acted fairly quick. As far as "Tom" goes, I forwarded a copy of his SPAM to Microsoft and asked that it be directed to their legal department. I'm sure others did as well. Microsoft probably doesn't like their name being dragged through the mud by SPAMmers anymore than anyone else does. "Tom" being the consumate legal and copyright wiz he thinks he is thought he could avoid any possible legal entanglement with Microsoft with his clever use of case. He forged the address to read "Tom@MicroSoft.com." Sorry, Tom is doesn't work that way, Microsoft IS MicroSoft, MICROSOFT, or microsoft. Altering case may amuse their lawyers, but that is as far as it goes. Even if "Tom" said he was "tom@mykrosawft.com," he could still be in trouble because of the phonetic similarlity. Most domain registries wouldn't register such a name because of the obvious phonetic similarity. Microsoft probably receives zillions of complaints about their name being forged into SPAM's, so "Tom" may escape this time, but such stunts can open fools like "Tom" to all kinds of legal misery.

Received: from chad345@aol.com [153.34.171.98] by linux.inti.net
(SMTPD32-4.02c) id AB5316E045C; Thu, 04 Jun 1998 12:37:23 CST5CDT
Date: Wed, 3 Jun 1998 19:17:16
From:
To:
Subject: Hello
X-UIDL: 891159936
Status: U

Can YOU help me i need to have some people click on my add on my
page so i can keep it.if i cant get people to click on it im not
going to have the money to keep it. it well just take you a min.
to go click
your not on a mailing list i welll never email you again.

http://www.angelfire.com/bc/CoolCoolCool/Cool.html

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE THERE GOING TO
KILL MY PAGE PPPLLLEEEAAASSSEEEE