Best of the ISP-Lists

Liar, Liar

Members of the ISP-Webhosting list discuss a new scam being perpetrated on ISPs' webhosting clients. It all starts with an e-mail claiming that your client's site was unavailable. . .

[November 8, 2001]

On the ISP-Webhosting list in October, PL complained,

"I have a serious problem: someone has been e-mailing several of my clients, claiming that their websites have been unavailable. The sites have not been down, and are in fact monitored. What should I do?"

A number of respondents reported having spotted similar attacks:

[MW noted] "I got one of these notes from this fruit loop back in July. The funny thing is that the site he said was down is hosted on one of my commercial servers that I have pretty regular monitoring on. Looked like some kind of scam to me."

[CB agreed] "This guy has been causing problems to the community at large, and is on his way to becoming infamous. He's sent this e-mail to sites under development, or domains that clients haven't ever done anything with."

Others advised straightforward courses of action:

[ML recalled] "We had this exact problem with a competing hosting company sometime last year. We had our lawyer send a well-written 'cease and desist' letter that detailed how we would file a complaint with the state attorney general. Our customers never heard from this company again."

[JR observed] "This is just a different way to spam people: be supposedly helpful, then spam them. If you want to confirm this, do a search for his e-mail address on Google. Solutions? Educate and inform your customers of this scam, and block his e-mail address."

[MR added] "You need a copy of the e-mail this guy is sending, including full headers. You should be able to contact his provider and get some cooperation from them in finding the slimeball. Meanwhile, send an
e-mail to your customers to tell them about his unethical business practices."

—End