I am sick of spam.
This domain is located in California. Therefore, he sending of any unsolicited email advertising messages to this domain will result in the imposition of civil liability against you in accordance with California Business & Prof. Code Section 17538.45.
The sending of email to any account that I own, including chuck (at) gumbopages (dot) com, and my alternate accounts gumbo (at) pair (dot) com and chuck (at) downhome (dot) org, implies understanding and consent of the policy below.
I have a zero-tolerance policy toward spam, particularly spam that originates from people who've used some kind of bot to harvest my email address from the mailto: links on this web site.
Here's the Riot Act:
Unless I know you personally, or unless I have personally subscribed to
an email list which you own and/or for which you are the administrator, or
unless you are asking a question or thanking me or making some comment
based upon content from my web page or from a Usenet posting which I have
written, or unless you are asking for a link to your site, or writing just
to say hi, be my friend, or just to talk ... don't send me email.
This actually leaves most
of you broad access to send me email; in fact, I welcome email from just
about anyone (even hate mailers, because it amuses me highly and gives me
a relished and entertaining opportunity to publicly ridicule said hate
mailer), unless you are a spammer. Email from spammers is and shall always be
completely unwelcome.
By "spammer" I mean a person or organization
1) who sends me unsolicited commercial and/or advertising email (either individually written
or as part of a bulk emailing or email list),
2) who offers participation in a pyramid scheme (a.k.a. multi-level
marketing),
3) who sends me a chain letter,
4) who sends me unsolicited religious proselytization or propaganda,
5) who places me on an email list to which I did not personally and
explicitly subscribe,
6) who sends abusive and/or threatening email (which, incidentally, is a
Federal offense),
7) who sends me any email in which any part of the headers, return path, and/or From: field
are forged in an attempt to conceal the origin of the email,
8) or who has harvested my address either automatically or manually from any posting I or
anyone else has made via a website, email, Usenet, IRC or any other digital medium or analog
medium such as a print magazine, in furtherance of any activity mentioned in items 1 - 8 above.
If you are one of the above people, I hereby notify you that I do not want your email, nor
will I respond to your email.
Also, bear in mind that I will never buy anything from anyone who advertises, endorses or in any way makes use of these methods.
Anyone who sends me spam will
have their email address and/or entire
domain placed into a filter that will trash any further incoming mail from
that address and/or domain at the gumbopages.com domain's root level. I
will also report each and every incidence of spam received at any of my
email accounts to the administrators of the sender's site so that the
appropriate sanctions may be taken against them. Nowadays, such reports
are made via the excellent service SpamCop.
In short, I will do anything and everything within my power to see to it that
your network administrators cancel your account and access to Internet services for
your network abuse. And I get lots and lots of accounts cancelled.
I am a writer and editor, and as it's not my primary occupation, most of
my writing and editing is done in my spare time. Therefore, since I am
available for hire as a writer and/or editor, I will consider any
unsolicited email which fits into the description of "spam" as stated
above as a request for me to proof-read your email at a standard fee of
$300 per message. The terms for these services are 30-day net, with an
interest accruing after 30 days.
This fee is due and payable immediately upon receipt of such messages.
I will take whatever means I deem necessary to collect such payments, above and
beyond your California civil liability of $50 per message, up
to and including, but not limited to collection agencies and legal suits
(which will be filed in the court of common pleas in my local county). I
will also take any and every action I feel is necessary to notify and,
most importantly, cease such unwanted messages from the originator. Emails meeting
the above criteria for which I have not received payment within 30 days become my property;
therefore I also reserve the right to (among other things) re-post, ridicule and/or
deface your messages in the public forum of my choice. (And if you send
me abusive, threatening or "hate" mail, I'll probably post it.)
I do NOT provide any warranty or guarantee for the accuracy of my proofing
services. Caveat emptor. This policy is non-negotiable. It has been in
effect since January 1, 1995 and will remain in effect until the time of
my death.
Thanks to Dave Solko for allowing me to nick parts of his excellent anti-spam policy statement for these pages.
This page is in no way intended to denigrate the Hormel Company and their canned meat product SPAM; unfortunately, that word has come to be synonymous with the worst practices of the Internet.
Chuck Taggart (e-mail chuck)