I am writing this article as a warning. From time to time I write business articles for newsletters as a means of promoting my web site. An article of mine was recently picked up from an article-announcement list by a larger-than-usual number of newsletters.

For a while, it was great ! My resource box (similar to one below), pointed to my web site and, during this one week in particular, hit counter was going crazy. I had ten times normal number of visitors.

And then disaster struck. The hit counter slammed to a halt. Suddenly I was getting numerous emails from potential customers telling me that my site was down. Now, I had been with Virtual Avenue for about 3 years and never had a problem, so I thought maybe it was just a temporary glitch and that site would be back up next day or something. I visited their support page & asked them politely to investigate.

After visiting site, I began reading my emails again (I get about 120 per day, and I download my email twice a day), and came across a robot message from their abuse department. The message told me that a spamming complaint had been received and that they were shutting me down in 48 hours. Well that was nonsense for a start - they had already shut down all my sites !

The message said that I had spammed someone by sending them a newsletter. I quote -

*** We regret to inform you that your account dwr9760 will be deleted from our servers within next 48 hours because it violates our Terms of Service, found at http://www.virtualave.net /account/policies os

Reason: Spam complaints [1311819] Subject: whatUseek Weekly - The Stealth Approach To Making Money On The Internet ***

1 pop3 mailbox 1 multiple message autoresponder 1 email extractor 1 email verifier as much spam from market as you can get

Mailbox must be large enough to handle leftover spam. Preferably a pop3 account so you can manage it on your desktop. Don't use a mailbox you don't want spammed, it's hard to get out. Free pop3's can be found at:

http://www.newmail.net/ http://www.pmail.net/ http://www.switchboard.com/

Stuff mailbox with leftover spam. You don't know where to get spam? (You have lived a good life.) I shop at FFAL sites, guestbooks, classified ad sites, freebie signups, etc. Anywhere you put your email address, be assured they want to send you mail back.

Best of all, some sites will sell your email address to spam lists. On other sites, mostly guestbooks and classified ads, spammers will harvest your email addresses and send you spam FREE!

After a week or a month (you want it to age), take spam from mailbox. Add spam to email extractor.

http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/stories/info/0,,000EG8,.html http://www.a1soft.com/emext.htm