The CHeep And Orm Society

The CHAOSociety Presents...
Formal Warning - I Smell A Rat

I recently got this email giving us at Chaosociety a formal warning from Geocities. I have presented it here in full glory and then this is followed by reasons why we won't be taking any notice of this whatsoever. It was a very convincing try, don't ya think. So I shall don my hospital uniform and become Dr Mark Sloan from Diagnosis Murder and solve this non-medical related crime of deception and fraud. Now...who wants to be Barry Van Dyke...? Anyone?

Date sent: Tue, 15 May 2001 16:27:14 +0100 (BST)
From: Robert Stein - [email protected] (1)
Subject: Website misuse - Official Warning
To: [email protected]

Dear Geocities user,
I have recently recieved (2) a formal complaint concerning the content of your Geocities web page.

<<(ins) www.geocities.com/chaosociety ()>>/ (3)

The complaint was submitted in the strictest confidence and we cannot disclose the subject name. However, if the content of your website includes any of the following content, we strongly recommend that you alter, or eradicate the material in question;

~illegal material (such as nudity, sex-related images)
~any references to third parties with offensive manner
~unnecessary usage of vulgar language/images
~any breech of copyright laws, where your site may base itself on, or may feature, contents from officially protected material (4)

You should not use this address for any queries you may have. There is a specially set-up e-mail address for all questions you may have regarding this issue centrally, through geocities.com (5)

I hope this issue can be resolved quikly (6) and with minimal delay.

Yours sincerely

R. Stein (7)
Geocities Management Team

Point 1: The Email Address - Geocities is a yahoo company so the yahoo bit is fine. However, it comes from a certain person called Robert (i.e. Bob). Now in our little circle of peeps we refer to man who runs Geocities as Bob or his full name Bob Geocities. We have no idea who actually runs Geocities and this all started from a guestbook entry by Dave donkeys years ago, see old guestbook for more details. So is this just a fantastic co-incidence that he too is called Bob...we shall see.

Point 2: Spelling Mistakes on a Seemingly Automated Email - It's i before e EXCEPT after c. God! I think the real Bob Geocities would know that.

Point 3: The Address - This bit seems real. It gives the appearance of an automated response following a complaint. Yet, I really don't like all the <<(ins), etc that looks like it has been hand written in and turned into a link by Yahoo mail and my Pegasus mail doesn't understand.

Point 4: The Rules - Geocities has more rules on content than these few and these seem to cover the content of my site precisely, too precisely. And Bob Geocities wouldn't spell "breach" wrong.

Point 5: Query address - Why won't it give me a query address? Hmm...

Point 6: More errors - Spell correctly Bob!

Point 7: The Name - Cue funny name featuring the initial "R"

Oh...and finally - This email was sent to my Uni email which Geocities are not aware of.

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