FFA Sites become interactive.

By 1998 we had discovered the FFA phenomena. We new that posting to
FFA sites was the
poor mans answer to the search engines. It would result in some
traffic. We built a submission system that would post to multiple FFA sites
at one time and this increased some leads and traffic, but, it wasn’t until
we created the FFAFARM at:

http://veretekk.ffafarm.com/suprabhat1983
did we start to see a significant increase in email lead generation. This was
around 1999 and was so successful it caused our single server to constantly
crash from the magnitude of automated postings.

Meltdown from to many leads and complaints

1999 was the year of meltdowns. As we continued to build more lead systems,
our databases began to crash. Our server couldn’t handle the demand of the
many postings and we started to get accused of spamming because we did not
have any type of verification in place. We had entered the next nightmare on the
Internet. As more of our lead systems and traffic sites became popular and used
often, the email databases we were building for our subscribers grew very large
and very fast. The problems were many, but the worst problem was the
complaints. You see, someone would sign up for one of our services, but as soon
as one of our subscribers sent that contact an email from our system via
autoresponder or direct email from our sites we would get hundreds of Spam
complaints.

Now, we were not Spamming, but we were being blamed for it. We were in for
the biggest challenge of our lives. We had to expand our system to hundreds of
servers to handle the demand on our technology, we had to convert to an SQL
database to prevent our database from crashing and we had to build a
verification system to prove the email we sent was legitimate. It took us 9 months
to accomplish this and we worked 20 hours a day for these 9 months to do so, all
under the threat of being shut down by our service provider who hosted our
servers.

Our provider didn’t believe us. They received 1,000s of complaints from
SpamCop regarding the email our system was legitimately sending out. The
problem was we could not prove these emails were legitimate because it was
virtually impossible for us to prove the recipient was legitimate and had
authorized us to send them email by using our services.

The Internet is at Risk because of Flammers not Spammers

We succeeded in building a fully searchable verified and verifiable system. This
new system was completed in late August of 2000. It is ironic that the day the
first version of our system was in place that Above.net shut us down. It took us 5
days to get the system back up with many emotional and sometimes angry
phone calls to our lawyers, Above.net officers, etc. and we finally convinced them
our system was now compliant to their new stringent anti-abuse policies. We
finally got reinstated after 5 days of being shut down. OUCH, that hurt!
Since we built our verification and verifiability system some interesting facts have
surfaced. Now, pay attention, because we think we have uncovered a major
conspiracy that is even affecting our economy! Here is why!
Many of you have probably heard of Julian Haight’s SpamCop system. If you get
an email you think is Spam, you can just go to Spam Cop, copy the alleged
Spam and paste it into his system, press a button and whammo….you have just
sent an anti Spam Flame to everyone connected to that email, links in the email,
uplines, etc. Most ISPs will shut you right down if they receive email from this
system with no questions. Bang, you are dead without the ability to even try to
defend yourself.
Interesting thing about our verifiability system though. We have automated the
verification search logs so any email in question can be entered into a form right
online and in seconds deliver a report on that email. Go see for your self:
http://inetekk.com/abuse.html (Search tom@wavefour.com for a sample)
If that email is in our system from verifying, it will give an in-depth report,
including the time, date, service that was verified, routing information and the IP
address from the email that was clicked on to verify. In other words, the system
will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt whether the email address in question
was verified or not.
Since our system has been in place we continue to get hundreds of spam
complaints from SpamCop, but, not one complaint has been legitimate. This is
because our verification system works. Timothy Lund, the Director of Above.net’s
Client Service Policies, has found SpamCop to be a nuisance and they have
stopped paying them anymore attention. In other words, our system has
destroyed SpamCop’s credibility. Timothy Lund now endorses our company and
systems and even sends business to us now. This is a 180 degree turnaround
because we have been able to disprove every Spam complaint 100% of the time!
The year 2,000 was a year that Spam Complaints became an all time high.
Uunet received over 200,000 spam complaints every month. Most complaints
were made against legitimate companies like Yahoo.com, Ebay.com,
Warehouse.com even Microsoft. Many companies were shut down, others were
financially hurt and the over all health of the Internet was hurt by this heightened
hue and cry against Spam. I believe the current financial condition we are in as of
this writing is partially due to this illegitimate attack on legitimate business by
reckless companies like SpamCop. Today, the US economy is undeniably tied to
the Internet.