A message from your webmaster:
Yesterday, Jan. 10, 2004, alumni who have signed our guest book were spamed by a "Nigerian scam" type message. Several people have emailed me, saying they were sure it came from email addresses left on the KHSAlumni.net web site guest book.
The spam message came from an IP address in Togo, West Africa, which is a constant source of spam. Copied below is a portion of an email I sent to the people who emailed me. I though it might be of interest to all Alumni.
There are ways around this problem. Most, if not all, involve hosting the guest book on our server space (donated by Lanny Gridley) and setting up a database driven system that allows an individual message (but not bulk messages) to be sent through our server, without revealing the actual email address to anyone. The best example I can think of is classmates.com, where today, I sent emails to 5 KHS alumni who had recently signed up at Classmates, but had not signed our guest book. I had to do this manually, and I have no idea what these folks email addresses are. They will receive an email from classmates, with a web address to click to pick up their message. If and when they do, I'll receive an email from Classmates advising me that the message has been delivered. It's kind of a clunky system, but it works, and nobody knows anyone else's email address.
The problem is,
a. I don't know how to do this, and
b. as a volunteer effort, with me being about the only volunteer, I doubt that I could find the time to set this up, if I did know how to do it.
I'm sure there are alumni that know how to do the above. Lanny is one, but I know that he doesn't have the time. Perhaps I can locate someone who would take on the project.
In the mean time, I have two suggestions:
1. You can hide your email address from most robots by going to http://www.khsalumni.net/gbchange.htm and requesting a deletion of the old entry, then reenter your information, but enter your email address as "you at yourdomain" or "you at yourdomain dot com" . Note that you will no longer receive those highly informative newsletters from me if you do this, because I use the same database to send them out that I use for the "indexed" guest book pages (sorted by class, etc.). I might be able to solve this problem, if others follow your lead.
2. Solve ALL your spam problems by downloading and installing PopFile. PopFile is a FREE spam blocker that acts as a mail server between your ISP's mail server and your email client program. Here's a web page that shows how it works with the email program I use (and sell, by the way, on one of my commercial web sites):
http://sharewareoutlet.com/popfile.htm
Sorry I don't have a quick and easy solution to this problem, but thanks for letting me know that it has happened again.