http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ccarch/ccsam012.htm
On The Web
Y2K 'jerk' resorts to spam
By Sam Vincent Meddis, USATODAY.com
Some jerk put my e-mail address on
his fear-mongering Y2K Web site
last week.
In the space of a couple of days, I
got more than a hundred messages
from hysterical-sounding people
who seem to believe that the New
Year's countdown clock will chime
in "The End Of The World As We
Know It."
I'm not going to provide the URL for
the fear-mongering Web site. Free
advertisement is probably what The
Jerk is longing for.
(BTW, in my 28 years in journalism, I
can't remember ever having
referred to someone as a "jerk," at
least in print. And having spent
much of my career covering
criminal justice, I've come across a veritable who's who
of creepy folks. Murderers. Spies. Drug dealers. Even an
outlaw dictator, ex-Panamanian strongman Manuel
Noriega. All of those marauders, of course, merit their
own disparaging epithets. But "jerk" may be the best
way to describe Y2Krackpots who spew their
disinformation all over cyberspace and terrify the
gullible.)
What the paranoiac e-mail messages had in common
was a list of 39 preposterous Y2K-related questions,
most of them of the "when did you stop beating your
wife" variety.
Naturally, they included a hyperlink to The Jerk's Web
site.
Typical of messages was the one whose subject line
pleaded for "truthful and accurate coverage."
"Your coverage of the Year 2000 problem has been
terrible," it declared. "As a reader of your publication, I
am appalled that you have not dedicated more
investigative resources to this problem and its potential
impacts."
It purported to be an individual criticism of USA TODAY
and/or me personally. But my inspection of the e-mail
message showed that the identical item had been bulk
e-mailed to other major newspapers and
newsmagazines. In my mind, that made it just thinly
disguised "spam," the form-letter equivalent of junk
mail.
I even got a message addressed to Rajiv
Chandrasekaran, a tech reporter with The Washington
Post.
The apparent reason for that mix-up: E-mail messages
can be sent to multiple parties with only one name
listed as the recipient -- a gimmick intended to make
spam look personalized. The writer of that message
must have cross-linked his spam list somehow.
I decided to respond to one of the e-mail senders,
someone who had sent the same message to no fewer
than 20 news organizations, including everyone from
the Associated Press to the National Enquirer. The
sender was someone identified as BarbMC5.
I couldn't reply to each of the persons who were conned
by The Jerk. But if they are really looking for "truthful
and accurate coverage," I'd give them the same advice I
gave to BarbMC5.
That is, spend some quality time browsing through our
Y2K resources index. It includes our latest new reports,
an extensive archive of past stories, links to useful Web
sites and tips on how to prepare for possible problems.
There are also links to previous pieces I've written
about Y2K, commentaries which basically suggest that
we all "chill out a little."
That we prepare the same way we would for a winter
storm, not for a nuclear winter.
And bear in mind that for most of us, it's far more likely
that we'll face a winter storm in the coming year than a
significant Y2K computer problem.
Sam is USATODAY.com's Technology Editor. On the Web
is a weekly column on issues and topics that will help
you become a better informed, more adept Web
traveler. Check out Sam's background and how he
arrived in cyberspace.
Copyright ) 1999, USA TODAY. All rights reserved.
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-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), December 16, 1999