Mark Towner is a Liar
For those that don't know, Mark Towner is a fringe political activist whose claims to fame are massive political spamming, republishing news stories without proper permission (not to mention ripping off the logo from Spyglass Entertainment without permission until he got wind of someone notifying the company of that copyright violation) and generally being an immature pest and embarrassment to Utah Republicans that'd rather keep him at a safe distance. He's also fond of lying to puff up his importance in the realm of Utah politics. Well, Mr. Towner, I can prove you're a liar (and not a very good one at that).
When confronted with allegations of spamming, he boasts that he provides an opt-out link at the end of each message he sends (see first comment). It's about the equivalent of someone leaving dozens of those adds on your doorknob with a little note that says "just ask me and I'll stop". (How about not starting in the first place, eh?) Unfortunately for Mark, FeedBlitz, the service he uses for his spamtastic activities, expressly disallows adding any subscriber to one of their lists without having opted in. Whoopsie, looking like Mark's been violating the ToS over there and could risk being blacklisted from the service. Maybe someone should let the folks at FeedBlitz know that Mark's not been playing by the rules?
Then there's his insane claim of having over 10,000 subscribers. Uh oh… a quick search on the FeedBlitz website shows he has a scant 3,947 subscribers, nowhere near the puffed up numbers he claims. (I'd deep link the search, but I don't see a way to do that. Just do a search for "spyglass" and you'll see him, front and center.) I'm not the only one calling him on this BS either; Part of the Plan took him to task on it as well.
Between regular copyright infringement, ToS violations and being an immature pest (again, see comments), it's a wonder anyone takes Mark Towner seriously. See what you did Mark? You ticked me right off and pretty much made me break my rule against ad hominems.
UPDATED 6-23-2007 @ 7:45AM: I just got the following message in my inbox:
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Hopefully This will work OK
Thank You,
Mark E Towner, The Political Spyglass
I guess Utah's own political spam king is still at it! I made sure to send my abuse complaint and I would hope the rest of you spammed by him would too.
Jesse
Shauna
Hu oh, Jesse, better watch out. Now he'll probably post a nasty about you, like he did to Jeff Bell and me. I think I got him on his advanced degree, too.
Maybe in his next speech, he'll mention the thousands of blogs that write about him, when really it's just this one.
What’s also telling is that the Google Group he ran for a while (you know, the one that had about 10 angry "unsubscribe me" requests a day) could have only been setup effectively by importing a large list. That requires approval from Google. By most accounts, you have to give some solid evidence that the list of users all opted in before they'll let you do that.
Read this thread about how Google shot down a request for a mass import. Then consider that Mark probably did a mass import. Then add in the angry responses to being subscribed. Hmmm… I can connect the dots to see that Mark probably lied to Google as well concerning the subscriber list just like he did to FeedBlitz! The crumb trail leads to more and more layers of deception.
Mark has been a huge bully and threatened many different bloggers.
He can also kiss both cheeks. I'm not afraid of pirates. Especially not the made-up ones.