[AT] Does Walt have a death wish?

[Spencer Yost]

I am not sure why this is happening, but there are a couple of facts that
force a couple of conclusions:

1 - Many of the names mentioned, like Paul Waugh's wife's name and the
purposeful misspelling of Georges name, does not appear anywhere in ATIS
archives, Old Iron Auction etc.

2 - A very large number of the folks that have received this unsolicited
material do not have addresses (or recent correct addresses) at
OldIronAuction or the ATIS archives.  

3 - It is only happening to AT subscribers.   It is not happening to SEL,
AJD, Farmall, etc subscribers form what I can tell.

4 - Addresses don't exist in most of the profiles, nor are the profiles
even on the server.

Conclusion:   This is caused by another site AT folks frequent or is the
work of a virus in an AT list member's computer that is simply harvesting
names and crossing to listings on the Internet directories for addresses
(or a recently subscribed lurker  who is manually doing this) .  This is
the typical "sales commission" scam for magazines brought forward 30 years
to the Internet.  I can tell you it is not Dave Rotigel (aka Evil Dave).

On another note.  I never suspected Walt because of the scope of the issue
- He might of done it to one or two as a joke but not 20 or so.  In fact he
called tonight because through Irma he heard of the accusations.  He asked
to rely the message that he had nothing to do with this.   Take that at
face value but I don't believe it was him.

I am sorry to hear of folks trouble with this and please feel free to
continue to discuss this on the list to try to zero in on the common
denominator.

Spencer Yost
Owner, ATIS
Plow the Net!
http://www.atis.net