For about ten years, I have been very cautious when submitting my e-mail address anywhere. But thanks to careless friends who submitted my address to 'free greetings card' sites not realising that they were simply collecting addresses to spam and 'get a free iPhone' offers which require you to 'invite friends' to share more 'free goodies', I am the lucky recipient of about 300 spam e-mails per day. Fortunately, my e-mail provider filters most of them out for me but I still have to go through the filter daily just in case there has been a filter error.
One cardinal rule has been that when giving an e-mail address, I always give a unique address for the site I am on, e.g. when I submitted my address on the BBC website, I used the address bbc@*mysubdomain*.fsnet.co.uk - thus if I start getting spam sent to this address, I know where the spammers got my e-mail address.
To date, the address which get the most spam were the addresses I registered with the now defunct www.talkabloutgovernment.com who did the blindingly dumb thing of publishing all their members' e-mail addresses on the site without warning. Only once the spammers had harvested the addresses did they warn their members that they did this - though they never thought to stop doing it. About 40% of the spam I get originated from this site. Their stupidity has blighted the e-mail experience of everybody who registered with them. Now they are gone.
The next highest contributor, by a considerable margin, is The Independent newspaper's website, on which I registered using the e-mail address indi@*mysubdomain*.fsnet.co.uk. Easily 5% of the spam I get is sent to this address. I contacted The Independent's IT manager to warn them that their e-mail database had been compromised. They claim to have consulted the relevant person and simply I subsequently received a denial that this could possibly have happened - yet the feedback loop I created for the purpose proves that it did.
Another prominent perpetrator of this carelessness is the site www.americasarmy.com (a subsidiary, I believe, of the US Department of Defense) on which I registered out of curiosity in 2003 to see what brainwashing computer war games they were creating to normalise the art of mass slaughter. This was a slow burner but a couple of months ago, I received my first spam e-mail originating from this registration.
There are others, mainly small businesses with webmasters who, in all likelihood, double up as secretaries or delivery drivers who probably don't know what they are doing but others are sites which may well have sold their databases for profit
Wednesday, 17 August 2011
Saturday, 13 August 2011
JustHost.com stole my money
Firstly, just in case JustHost.com read this feeling litigious, dictionary.reference.com/browse/steal defines stealing as:
to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, especially secretly or by force
That clarified, I took out a hosting agreement with JustHost.com on 18th August 2009. I paid 47.52 by PayPal for two years webhosting which was renewable every two years thenceforth at the same rate. The confirmtion e-mail I received states:
You have successfully signed up for a subscription to Just Host Hosting / Domain Package using PayPal.
Your first subscription payment, for 47.52 GBP, has already been sent to Just Host Ltd..
----------------------------------------------------------------
Subscription Details
----------------------------------------------------------------
Date of Sign Up: 18 Aug. 2009
Subscription Name: Just Host Hosting / Domain Package
Subscription Number: S-8EY290936******** (my asterisks)
Subscription Terms:
£47.52 GBP for the first 2 years
Then £47.52 GBP for each 2 years
On 1st August 2011, I closed my PayPal account.
On 11th August, one week before the renewal was due, I received an invoice for £174.75 for the next two years and that the amount was automatically deducted from my debit card.
I checked with my bank, and sure enough, the amount had been charged to my account.
There are so many problems here that it is difficult to know where to begin.
The agreement I took out was for £47.52 per two years renewable. It is unacceptable to increase the amount without consulting the customer, especially when the increase is by a factor of almost four.
The agreement was via my PayPal account which was closed.
The amount invoiced was charged to my debit card without authority.
The charge to my debit card was one week before the date of the invoice.
I have tried to contact JustHost to find out what they are playing at but the staff on their 'live chat' refused to discuss billing or account issues, nobody answers the telephone, instead all billing and account enquiries are instructed to be submitted by e-mail and all e-mails receive automated garbage responses which show that no human has ever cast their eyes on them.
Don't let the young woman with her hand to her ear in a listening gesture fool you, JustHost.com don't want to hear your problems, especially when it comes to getting the money back which they have stolen from you.
And to be clear, JustHost.com, if you or your lawyers are reading this (which is highly unlikely, admittedly), you had no right to take £174,75 from my account and you did not have my permission. You did so secretly, in that by the time that you informed me that you were going to take it, you had already done so. And given that I was not given any option to refuse payment, it was done so by force. You stole it. JustHost.com stole my money.
to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, especially secretly or by force
That clarified, I took out a hosting agreement with JustHost.com on 18th August 2009. I paid 47.52 by PayPal for two years webhosting which was renewable every two years thenceforth at the same rate. The confirmtion e-mail I received states:
You have successfully signed up for a subscription to Just Host Hosting / Domain Package using PayPal.
Your first subscription payment, for 47.52 GBP, has already been sent to Just Host Ltd..
----------------------------------------------------------------
Subscription Details
----------------------------------------------------------------
Date of Sign Up: 18 Aug. 2009
Subscription Name: Just Host Hosting / Domain Package
Subscription Number: S-8EY290936******** (my asterisks)
Subscription Terms:
£47.52 GBP for the first 2 years
Then £47.52 GBP for each 2 years
On 1st August 2011, I closed my PayPal account.
On 11th August, one week before the renewal was due, I received an invoice for £174.75 for the next two years and that the amount was automatically deducted from my debit card.
I checked with my bank, and sure enough, the amount had been charged to my account.
There are so many problems here that it is difficult to know where to begin.
The agreement I took out was for £47.52 per two years renewable. It is unacceptable to increase the amount without consulting the customer, especially when the increase is by a factor of almost four.
The agreement was via my PayPal account which was closed.
The amount invoiced was charged to my debit card without authority.
The charge to my debit card was one week before the date of the invoice.
I have tried to contact JustHost to find out what they are playing at but the staff on their 'live chat' refused to discuss billing or account issues, nobody answers the telephone, instead all billing and account enquiries are instructed to be submitted by e-mail and all e-mails receive automated garbage responses which show that no human has ever cast their eyes on them.
Don't let the young woman with her hand to her ear in a listening gesture fool you, JustHost.com don't want to hear your problems, especially when it comes to getting the money back which they have stolen from you.
And to be clear, JustHost.com, if you or your lawyers are reading this (which is highly unlikely, admittedly), you had no right to take £174,75 from my account and you did not have my permission. You did so secretly, in that by the time that you informed me that you were going to take it, you had already done so. And given that I was not given any option to refuse payment, it was done so by force. You stole it. JustHost.com stole my money.
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