Dear Listmembers, Here is a heads-up about a company alledgedly mining existing web sites and charging 49.95 for access. I believe my own personal web site has been duplicated by them. I have also been personally "junk mailed" by this firm. This is a one-time informational message - please, there is no need to discuss this on the regional lists. You may contact me with questions or comments at vdpcom@warwick.net and I will pass on any additional pertinent information. Thank You, Cathy DiPietro vdpcom@warwick.net > > About 2 weeks ago we received a complaint from an Archives submitter that her materials were found on a genealogy subscription service: > > www.familydiscovery.com > > The submitter was able to do a little digging and found that > they were linking to her files housed on her server, but shrink-wrapped > inside a frame so it appears to be THEIR work. About 10 days ago, to > investigate this, I signed up with familydiscovery. To date, I have not > received a user id or password to get inside. The registered owners of > the web site gave bogus telephone numbers in their registration. > One number goes to a recorded message line; the other to a > carpet company. Some of the e-mail addys on their web site bounce. > > Standing on the outside and looking through the window, it > appears that several folks' web sites have been prize-mined: > > http://www.familydiscovery.com/whatsnew.htm > > The Storey Co., IA and the Washington Co., PA stuff seem to > come from USGenWeb sites. Some of the other IA and NC stuff seems to > come from non-USGW sites. None of the materials seem to be housed at > either rootsweb or usgennet. > > I would suggest we all add the Java applet to bust out of the > shrink-wrapping: > > <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript"> > <!-- Hide script from old browsers > if (top.location !=self.location) { > top.location = self.location > } > // End hiding script from old browsers --> > </SCRIPT> > > > This needs to be inserted between <HTML> and <TITLE> on every > web page. > > If you have text files on your web site, you will need to add a little > shrink wrapping of your own: > > Create a blank web page -- use the tags <PRE> </PRE> --- > and paste your text file in between the <PRE> and the </PRE> -- and be > sure to add the Java applet. > > If anyone out there is or has been a member of familydiscovery -- or has > been ripped off by them, I ["Joy Fisher" <jfisher@ucla.edu>] would like > to hear from you. > > Permission is granted to forward this message.