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| Spam: The Sad, Sad,
Story of a Website Gone Awry It all started innocently enough. We wanted to put up a web site where GS alumni could come to find out what's going on at GS and to keep in touch with their friends. It all seemed so simple back in the glorious, halcyon days of 1999. Oh, for the simplicity of those times! Our site had a Guestbook feature. Nothing spectacular, just a nice little posting area where alumni could share a special memory, look for a special friend, or shout out a Hello to anyone who might know them. But in about 2002, our Guestbook starting suddenly displaying multi-page lists of links to websites most unsavory! The unbridled choking of the Guestbook made it impossible for it to do its previous job. The occasional special messages from alumni were drowned in the greed-mongering noise of the spammer. And as we had no way to police the Guestbook other than to edit the file EVERY TEN MINUTES to elimiate the spam, we had to shut it down. Our site also had E-mail lists, so that a member could send E-mail to one address and have that shout forwarded to all his classmates. But spammers found out about the addresses, and all that came to the alumni via those addresses was post after post after post of unwanted advertising. Really, why do WE need Viagra? Or a fake Rolex? Or on-line video poker? So we had to password-protect the E-mail lists, and that has made them all but useless. We still maintain them, but to what purpose? In 2004, due to a change in administration and in the snail-mail address of the webmaster, we were late in paying the registration fee for our site name, ncgsaa.org. Within five minutes of the expiration, some hacker out of Canada had taken the name and linked it to his porn site, so that alumni coming to our site got re-routed to his. Some of our alumni are minors, you know? The thief offered to sell the name back to us, for $5000. We refused, and now we are are ncgsalumni.org. In February of 2006, spammers started posting daily lists of links to our Alumni Bulletin Board, filling up the forums with their pointless garbage, making it impossible for the alumni to make any headway in keeping up with one another. The forums used to be open to anyone. We had to close them to public posts and require users to register. And it's going to take some time to get the posts cleaned up. What can you do? First, NEVER buy anything from a spammer. If these people weren't making money, they wouldn't be doing this. Second, write your state and national representatives and ask them to get tough on spam. I don't want to restrict free speech or stop the process of open debate that's the lifeblood of a free society, I just want to make it possible to punish people who abuse the system. Third, ask your congressmen to submit and vote on a bill that requires DNS registration companies to give site name owners 30 days grace when their name registrations expire. For those 30 days, only the original owner of a name can register it. The way the laws are written now, you will be 'evicted' from your home page if you are ten seconds late with the rent. A little grace, please. Finally, actively work towards keeping the Internet Clean and Free. Thanks a lot. I really needed to get that off my chest. If you have any suggestions, please send them to me, at my address: webmaster at ncgsalumni dot org. |
Governor's School 1971 OK, GSers from '71. Let's get that contact information sent in. We have only three email addresses known among the 400 students of that year. Send me some email. We would all love to hear from each other. During GS, I stayed in the Lehman Hall, and we used to call ourselves the Lehman Lovers! Hey guys! Where are you now? So make yourself known and tell us the whereabouts of other GSers. See you in Email! Sam Sanders GS '71, Art
Once an Atheist, always an Atheist: Don't Count On
It! And so the divine sense of humor sneaks up on us in the quotidian and mundane.....the village atheist becomes a priest. What a delicious joke on us all! Priest J. Scott Newman |
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