In article <[log in to unmask]>, LISTSERV list owners' forum <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Has anyone else seen this? Is it legitimate? I refuse to pass it on to my > list if it is indeed a scam to collect email addresses for a later spam. (I > realize that I am not showing the true holiday spirit, but I worry about the > use of the net for other purposes...). Someone forwarded that message to a list I am subscribed to. This was my response questioning the validity of the message, and how there is a valid charity donation initiative via the WWW: Is this a joke? I mean, really, what would stop a "well intentioned" user from writing a very simple job that mailed those sites automatically throughout the Christmas season. If you check http://north.pole.org/ the agreement says the following: 1.) Various corportations "sponsor" a particular charity for this site 2.) When someone visits the page of this sponsored charity on north.pole.org, the sponsor donates $.10 to that charity While certainly someone could write a program to hit these pages automatically a gazzillion times, the below system of sending e-mail seems much more likely to get out of hand. Is there a source from Sun which confirms this? Organizations paritipating the the WWW page initiative are Sun (sponsoring a page on Second Harvest Food Bank), Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co, Inc. (sponsoring the Chesapeak Wildlife Heritage), Ex Machina, Inc. (sponsoring the Harlem Educationsal Activities Fund, Inc.), and Bay Networks (sponsoring Plugged In). (Just worried that this might result in the site being horrendously mailbombed with no benefit.) David