Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:19:10 -0500
From: Ted White <twhite8 at cox.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Messages purporting to be from Sally Hand
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

On 2/10/2010 10:15 PM, Keith F. Lynch wrote:

>  Today I got six identical HTML emails from someone purporting to be
>  Sally Hand.  (She attended 19 WSFA meeetings about a decade ago.) All
>  six were apparently sent directly from Facebook, with a subject of
>  "Check out my photos on Facebook."  But first, I'm told, I have to
>  *join* Facebook.  There's no direct URL, no personalized text, no
>  non-Facebook URL or email address, and no indication as to why she
>  would be contacting me, what the pictures contain, or why she thinks
>  they might interest me.  In other words, it looks and feels very
>  automated, impersonal, repetitive, HTMLish, and spammy.
>
>  Three of them were sent to my regular email address, and the other
>  three to a disposable email address that expired five years ago.
>
>  Needless to say, I have no intention of joining Facebook, as any
>  attempt to view any of their pages gets me:
>
>  You are using an incompatible web browser.
>
>  Sorry, we're not cool enough to support your browser.  Please keep it
>  real with one of the following browsers: ...
>
>  I guess they disagree with the following:
>
>  "Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label
>  on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the
>  Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on
>  another computer, another word processor, or another network." -- Sir
>  Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web.
>
>  Did anyone else get anything like this?  Does anyone have any idea
>  what's going on?  Does anyone have a current email address for her?
>  Thanks.

The Other WSFA list received two such emails, but I personally received
none.  I deduce from this that somehow Facebook got its hands on Ms.
Hand's address book, probably with her complicity, something that verges
on spamming.  I too am not a member of Facebook and have no interest in
it (but I think my band has a Facebook page).

--Ted White