May, 2001      Diablo Blue      Page 3

(Continued from page 2)

quickly. Email has exploded with insurance quotes, bogus stock tips, shady refinancing debt services or home mortgages from the likes of Great-Loan-Rates@6aaa.fsnet.co.uk, whpost10986@avtechk.com.cn. These people cannot fulfill their promises... they're ripping you off.
9 -- If they're using a freebie account... you can't afford it
If you think about it for a moment, it's rather obvious that you wouldn't want to do business with anyone using a freebie email account. If they've got nothing to loose, then they've got nothing for you! Several of those below admit openly that their clientele is 88% spammers. All of the following freebie sites are responsible for the majority of spam:
angelfire.com, another.com, arabia.com, bangkok.com, building.com, china.com,
consultant.com, email-prom.net, email.com, excite.com, golfmail.com, hotmail.com,
iway2000.com, loudpages.com, lycos.co.uk, lycos.com, mail.com, megspace.com,
metahoo.com, mundomail.net, netcolony.com, netdest.com, netnet.com.sg, newmail.net,
oceanfree.net, postmaster.com, prontomail.com, telsurf.net, turbomail.net, usa.com,
verizon.net, verizonmail.com, virtualactive.com, bigfoot.com, webmail.co.za,
wickedspeed.net, yahoo.com, India.com, freehosting.com
10 -- If it's too good to be true... it is!
The other day a UCE told me I could look like Cindy Crawford in two weeks. (Picture that!) Another said I no longer had to worry about the IRS... yet another said it could get me out of financial trouble... dozens of them each day want to sell me millions of email addresses. All of these are blatant lies, and most certainly a rip off. Most spam today wants only to get your email address validated. So never, ever reply. Never. They want to sell the names to other spammers, or poor suckers who actually think they can get rich sending unsolicited email.
These ten warning signs are the main things to watch out for. There are others which I'll explore in a future issue. Just keep them in mind, and laugh at them as you drag them to the trash... where the email, and their senders belong.
Note: for you disbelievers out there, I challenge you to attempt to track down all the spam

(Continued on page 9)

Wednesday, February 07, 2001, VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope John Paul is considering naming Saint Isidore of Seville the patron saint of Internet users and computer programmers, Vatican sources said on Tuesday. Saint Isidore was nominated two years ago but the Holy See has yet to make a final decision.
Saint Isidore, who lived in the seventh century, was believed to have written the world's first encyclopedia, the Etymologies, which included entries on medicine, mathematics, history and theology.
The Vatican first went online in 1996 with its Web site www.vatican.va which it has used to publish thousands of Catholic Church documents and Papal speeches.
The site is powered by three host computers named after archangels -- Raphael, Michael and Gabriel.
The Pope himself moved into cyberspace in 1998 when the world's one billion Roman Catholics were first able to hear and see him recite the Angelus prayers on Sundays and listen to his weekly audience on Wednesdays on the Vatican web page.