----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Howard" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2002 6:49 PM
Subject: Poetry Society Website Shock
> The following is from Christina Patterson of the (UK) Poetry Society...
>
>
> WEBSITE SHOCK AT THE POETRY SOCIETY 20/3/02
>
> Dear All,
>
> On Thursday we logged on to our computers and discovered that our
> website had disappeared. Where before there were hundreds of pages of
> information about what's happening in contemporary poetry and about the
> Poetry Society's publications, projects, events and work with schools,
> we found instead a whole new world of online gambling, products for poor
> skin and hair loss, "amazing financial services" and corporate gifts.
>
> Further searches revealed that this extraordinary website is one which
> is known for "spamming", i.e. the generation of junk emails such as
> those offering 500% extra income or miraculous recovery of your youth,
> looks or sexual performance. Their "keywords" content listed on the site
> includes "debt consolidation", "internet casinos", "home equity loans"
> and "LCD projector merchant accounts".
>
>
> There seems to have been a problem with the renewal of our domain name
> registration. A company called, amongst other names, Ultimate Search,
> based in Hong Kong, bought it up and added it to their large and
> eclectic portfolio. They have not replied to our emails or answered our
> phone-calls. All our emails are now going to Hong Kong. They are not
> being replied to or returned to us.
>
> We've spent five years building up our award-winning website, which was
> getting about 300,000 hits a month. It can now be found at:
>
> www.poetrysociety.org.uk . Please update all your links and bookmarks.
> Our general email is [log in to unmask] and all Poetry Society
> email addresses now have this suffix. If you have sent any of us an
> email since Wednesday 13 March, please send it again to the new email
> address ([log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]
> etc).
>
> I would be very grateful if you could forward this email to anyone you
> know who is interested in poetry and might be a regular user of our
> website. Clearly, there is no way of redirecting people from our
> original website and we have a gargantuan (and extremely expensive) task
> ahead. We are extremely grateful to charity lawyers Bates, Wells &
> Braithwaite, who have been advising and helping us on a pro bono basis.
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Christina Patterson
> Director
> 020 7420 9891
> [log in to unmask]
> www.poetrysociety.org.uk
>
>
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