wow. that sounds more than a little scary.. I rather suspect it relies on
generating fear more than anything. It's probably best to never reply to
anything like that. Doing so gives them information they probably didn't
have before hand. They could just be culling names from websites--not a hard
thing to do.

My advice, small consolation that it is, would be to trace the IP address if
you can and send a complaint to the hosting service. You can download
tracing software from NeoTrace or a few others for free for a demo. Check
the whois and see what the registration is all about. Usually outfits like
this thrive on your responses, so the less you give them, the better you
are, but now that they have that, your best chance is with the host. But
there are a number of self-labelled "spam evangelists" who might be of help.
It's a really seedy world out there---because of my involvement in a suicide
survivor's hotline, I've had more exposure than I would ever have wanted.
It's scary all the scummy things that go on.

The best thing you can do is just refuse to participate.

If you want more info, I can try to drudge up a bunch of links. I, a few
months ago, suffered a real scare as some nut started doing some pretty
strange things via email to me, and a number of people known to me thru a
board for suicide survivors. It was a total nightmare, and for the first
time in my life, I was truly scared because I couldn't find this guy. It was
really bizarre and very frightening, and it happened because I cut his
privileges on a board because he had posted a number of very scary messages
that turned out to be totally false (after I checked with coroners, police,
and even the governor's office of a certain state). Like I said, totally
bizarre. But his person, whoever he or she was, was very determined.
Finally, I sent off all the emails to AOL and the police, and I never heard
anything more.

Anything we can do to help!

Dawn


----- Original Message -----
From: "Jefferis Peterson" <jefferis@petersonsales.net>
To: <dreamweaver@lists.blueworld.com>
Sent: Monday, January 12, 2004 6:38 PM
Subject: OT: Scam, Slander, or What - Word of mouth.com


I recently received a report from some organization called word of mouth .
Com that:
> Someone has just begun to research your background via our website.> This
email has been automatically sent to you so as to make you aware that
> your background is being looked into.> The popularity of our website is
currently growing at a very rapid rate.

It turns out that this site is an anonymous 'reference' site, and that
someone "apparently" has put up a review of me, my work or something. What
made me really suspicious of this 'report' is the fact that last year I
added no new customers, but did updates for existing satisfied customers.
The site is so little known, that I'm pretty sure most of my clients would
not know about it. So I was wondering if the "someone" looking into my
background were Mouth itself since they send me an email with an offer to
join the service and find out what someone might or might not be saying
about me - all for a mere $20 to join and then solicit opinions from
anonymous reporters. I have no reason to believe anyone would be out to get
me for my web work nor do I think my clients would likely be ready to fork
out $20 just to tell other people what a great guy I am :-)

The only thing that concerned me was that in my other life, I have a
scholarly Christian website that deals with debate over current hot bed
issues, and someone could decide they'd like to go after me over something
totally unrelated to my business. Since I had no new clients last year and
the requirement was for a person to have dealt with me in a business
relationship in the past year, I really thought any report had to be bogus
or badly motivated. So I wrote the site to ask what checking they do against
slander, fictitious or false reports, and they wrote back, they are not
responsible. I thought that this lack of accountability for potentially
libelous conduct was unethical if not irresponsible. However, the only way
you can find out if you are being mistreated is to pay Mouth extortion money
to join and ask for these supposed anonymous reviews.

So I wanted to ask you folks, if you've heard of this site, if it sounds
like a scam or what to you?
Below is their seedy reply to my query.

Jeff


> If another person begins to research you in the future we will again
inform
> you via email.
> All users of the Wordofmouthconnection.com website are anonymous.>
Connection
authors do not typically submit connections because they want to
> communicate with you.> What they want to do is to communicate with other
people that know you without
> you knowing that they did so.> Connection authors submit connections
because
they either 1) have experience
> with and/or opinions regarding the connection subject that they want to
share
> with others, or 2) they are looking for others that have such experiences
> and/or opinions to share.> Connections are available IN FULL and at no
charge
through the "Search
> Connections" tab at the top of our website.> Wordofmouthconnection.com
connections are ONLY for the purpose of identifying
> the connection subject, and provide no additional information.> ALL
ADDITIONAL
INFORMATION is exchanged directly between our users via private
> email communications using our Anonymous Email System, and via any other
> communications forms by which they may choose to communicate outside of
our
> website.> If you find a connection that is interesting to you (typically
one
that is
> about someone you know) you may then communicate directly with the
connection
> author via private email communication using our Anonymous Email System so
as
> to learn the experiences and/or opinions of the connection author in
reference
> to the connection subject.> Use of our Anonymous Email System is reserved
for
Power Users.> If you do not want to receive email in the future when a
connection is
> submitted and/or when users search for connections about you then add your


~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jefferis Peterson, Pres.
Web Design and Marketing
http://www.PetersonSales.com



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