[Talk Host]

A couple of months ago, we had a registration from a farm that grows organic fruits and vegetables. This company wanted to post their products for sale on Talk of The Villages, claiming that because they were organic and it was a co-op of sorts, there should be no charge for advertising. Yet, these products still cost you money, as in US currency.

We offered to sell them advertising, but they declined. So we declined to allow them to post.

Now, I personally and our TOTV email address have begun to receive unsolicited email spam from this outfit, attempting to sell their products. There is only one way they could have gotten my email address, and that's from here.

I am hoping that they didn't, somehow....ahem, harvest email addresses from you folks on TOTV and are now badgering you to buy this stuff. Further I don't want them indicating to anyone that TOTV is associated with their enterprise.

I understand that there are those who prefer organic products, but this is a spamming issue and we don't want anybody to use our members in such a fashion.

JLK

[Snowbirdtobe]

If you get an email that is unsolicited your address might have been gleaned from a wide range of places. Harvested from TOTV, email list at a farmers market, neighborhood group, gardening club, petition to bring Whole Foods to TV etc.

One of these, email list at a farmers market, is fair game.
If someone has grabbed your email from a questionable source can you trust them that the produce is organic?

Budgets are tight in the farming community. My daughter writes a newsletter for an organic farm group in Massachusetts, some cash, some food. Great deal for both parties.

[Talk Host]

They got my email address and the email address of Talk of The Villages from Talk of The Villages, not from a farm stand.

[Russ_Boston]

Nothing here.

Perhaps when you turned them down you gave them an e-mail reply at some point? Seems so obvious that I'm sure you'd remember that though.

But anyone who has their e-mail public on TOTV (I think I do) is fair game.

[Snowbirdtobe]

I don't think that public email addresses on a private site are fair game.
There should be a clear terms of use statement that prohibits harvesting emails for any purpose.
Going through the TOTV database and scraping email addresses out is wrong.
Don’t trust people who do business this way.

[downeaster]

"Too Much Information". I am amazed at the amount of personal info that is posted on this forum. E-mail addresses, phone numbers, and even street addresses appear here. With little effort one can find the name, address, make,model of auto and the same for golf cart of a lot of posters. Add to that sex, age, marital status and the list goes on.

There are programs that crawl through the internet picking up a little here and a little there to piece together a pretty complete bio on a lot of folks.

Beware of TMI!

[jebartle]

Amazed at all you do to keep TOTV world safe....thanks

[hedoman]

I don't know how the many spammers get my email address but there are so many ways....You know those emails where it says at the end "send to 10 friends and your wish will be granted"? Well most of the time there are tracers attached as worms and those 10 friends are added to a huge list which then is sold.
Oh give the good old days when we only had junk mail....

[RichieLion]

Originally Posted by hedoman

I don't know how the many spammers get my email address but there are so many ways....You know those emails where it says at the end "send to 10 friends and your wish will be granted"? Well most of the time there are tracers attached as worms and those 10 friends are added to a huge list which then is sold.
Oh give the good old days when we only had junk mail....

You're correct, and that's why I never respond to those forwarded emails. I also dutifully mark as spam any I receive and so have very little spam mail at all get though to my main email page.

So far I have not received any spam which could be from the spammer who is the subject at hand.

[MrMark]

Originally Posted by Talk Host

A couple of months ago, we had a registration from a farm that grows organic fruits and vegetables. This company wanted to post their products for sale on Talk of The Villages, claiming that because they were organic and it was a co-op of sorts, there should be no charge for advertising. Yet, these products still cost you money, as in US currency.

We offered to sell them advertising, but they declined. So we declined to allow them to post.

Now, I personally and our TOTV email address have begun to receive unsolicited email spam from this outfit, attempting to sell their products. There is only one way they could have gotten my email address, and that's from here.

I am hoping that they didn't, somehow....ahem, harvest email addresses from you folks on TOTV and are now badgering you to buy this stuff. Further I don't want them indicating to anyone that TOTV is associated with their enterprise.

I understand that there are those who prefer organic products, but this is a spamming issue and we don't want anybody to use our members in such a fashion.

JLK

The only such Organic Farm I'm familiar with near TV is on Rte42 very near the intersection of 475 in beautiful downtown Pedro. To the best of my knowledge it's run by two Portugese Brothers, neither of whom speaks a whole lot of English. Don't believe their business depends on retail drive up trade or they would be long gone. I've always assumed that they have Commercial outlets for their Organic Produce. Hard to believe that these guys could have anything to do with the issues described.