More Mark Towner Spam: Is He Violating His Own Restraining Order Against Mike Ridgeway?
Due to being out of the country and almost immediately into the hospital, I haven't had a chance to write about the latest blast of spam coming from Utah's least favorite pirate captain. The following arrived on November 14 (twice, no less):
You are being asked to participate in a Nationwide Survey.
We would ask you to click on the following short Video to get your true feelings.
After you have watched the video, if you could reply with the following in the Subject Line:
Remove Me: This will remove you from ever receiving another survey from IGN
Strongly Agree: If you think Taxpayers should not Bail out anyone
Agree: If you agree Taxpayers should not Bail out reckless borrowers or lenders
Disagree: If you think Taxpayers should bail out some but not all
Strongly Disagree: If you think Taxpayers should bail out the entire problem
It doesn't take a lot of work to figure out that Mark's behind it either. The sending domain? Why, it's mailandftp.com, another FastMail.FM domain. This time, I complained both to LastMail.FM ([email protected]) and their hosting provider, New York Internet ([email protected]). A little digging around shows that IGN is just a dummy name and not any kind of real organization. Towner probably just made it up on the fly. I wonder if the SL City Weekly considered this when writing their puff piece press release article about Towner.
What's most amusing in all of this is who it was probably sent to. Everyone knows about Towner's infamous restraining order against Mike Ridgeway. It precludes the Republican gadfly from contacting the Towners in any way, including e-mail. I wonder, then, if it would be considered a violation of the restraining order to send Mr. Ridgeway a message. Funny that the e-mail address [email protected] appears in the mailing list that Towner exposed several months ago. I'm no Sherlock Holmes, but I sure can put two and two together.
It seems like these ethical lapses will never end.
UPDATE: I just noticed that Mark's "blog" is no longer listed on Utah Bloghive. I guess I'm not the only one fed up with his shenanigans.
Jesse
Shauna
Yay! I had cut back on my visits to the Hive because Towner always took up “The Right” with blog posts I never intend to read, and it annoyed me to have to see his name there. So, I’m quite happy to see he’s gone. Thanks for pointing it out!
Just a clarification on the bloghive. Mark asked that I remove his blog from the site. I have put off any other changes to the site while I’m getting the advisory board together, but I figured I should honor a removal request immediately.
Misty, I’ve tried to address the issue you noticed as well. I limit the number of posts from any single blog to 4 so that a fast updating blog doesn’t overwhelm the rest of the box. I do want the bloghive to be a respectful and inclusive community where lots of viewpoints are visible.
Misty,
I agree, and have stated similar frustrations before.
Bradley,
Thanks for honoring Towner’s request. The hive seems a lot cleaner and more organized lately.
Jesse,
I feel left out. How do I get on Towner’s really awesome mailing list? 😉
Good question, Frank. He’s already admitted to using phishing and harvesting techniques. That’s probably why my addresses got back on his list even though he supposedly removed them all.
Or maybe I have a really bad memory and signed up on his website. Because, obviously, these are “subscribers”, not “spam victims”.