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Micah Dubinko
Fri, 16 Dec 2005
Ruining the name Bill Kelle*
Someone going by the name of "Bill Kelle*" (full name censored to avoid compounding the damage) has been spamming quite aggressively, looking for suckers from which to money.
My spam filter is filled with messages from this guy, and now even more are getting through somehow.
Lots of money...
I only need 152 to make this one-time commitment of $10,000 to allow us to take the next step, which is to go nationwide with the TV program in July...
This really cheeses me off.
God has brought us this far, He is not going to stop helping us now. Each month, He calls on someone to step up and make that sacrifice. If today He is calling you, please obey His voice and help me. 5 1/2 more months, $1,520,000 and we will be in an incredible position..
I don't even know what to add beyond this. How about catching him in a lie?
You are currently subscribed to dailydevotional as: [email address I've never used or published]
What would Jesus spam?
Now, there happens to be a pulitzer prize winning, highly-respected New York Times editor with an actual name Bill Kelle*. Unfortunately, that good name is getting ruined by this scumbag spammer who happens to be using the same name.
To me, this seems far worse than the Wikipedia dustup around John Seigenthaler. I see one key difference in that probably millions are getting hammered by this spammer, often several times a day, and each message could potentially come across as coming from a legitimate person.
Besides ranting, what can be done about a situation like this? Actually, there's two questions. 1) What if the spammer is simply co-opting someone else's name? 2) What if the spammer really is named Bill Kelle*? -m
posted at: 15:53 | under: 2005-12 | 1 comment(s)
In all seriousness, there's obviously not a whole lot that we can do in the immediatte that wouldn't require some sort of Presidential approval to be sure we could whip his virtual a$$ and not run risk of crossing over the wrong line... obviously not something real hackers want anything to do with. It does continue to bring forward the notion that sooner or later -- hopefully sooner, but none-the-less -- the anonymous web is going to have to give up at least some of its anonymity to get back in return any chance of gaining a certain level of confidence that this web we've been a part of building for so many years can't easily be used as a tool to lie, cheat, and steal -- and get away with it in most cases without any fear that what they have done will result in anything of any major consequence.
To what level do you have to reach for in regards to exposure of ones identity to ensure protection of ones true rights to privacy while still maintaining an acceptable level of sanity on the web? I have no idea... but I definitely want to find out and am willing to do what it takes to get the answer.
Lets talk more about this in the coming weeks... I'm definitely willing to put force behind any concentrated effort we can pull together.
As always, excellent post Micah!
Posted by M. David Peterson at Fri Dec 16 19:38:27 2005
