Hello list: Some of you may be aware of an organization out there called familydiscovery.com. They are regularly spamming genealogists to solicit members to their site. THEY ARE NOT LEGITIMATE, as far as anyone has been able to determine. In an effort to stop this spam. Please read the following. If you get a message from them, please forward it to the address listed. Perhaps we can stop this once and for all! Debbie Barrett County Coordinator Pierce County WIGenWeb Project http://www.rootsweb.com/~wipierce/ ----- Original Message ----- From: "zorblitz" <zorblitz@mindspring.com> To: <WIGEN-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Friday, March 09, 2001 10:03 AM Subject: [WIGEN-L] Family Discovery jumps to Prodigy > 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@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. > > -- > Linda Emerson > > > ==== WIGEN Mailing List ==== > Celebrate Wisconsin! > Visit the Kewaunee County WIGenWeb Project Pages > http://www.rootsweb.com/~wikewaun/ > >