On September 20th, 2001, I received the following email in my inbox:
We at www.fastreader.net are saddened by the tragic events of September 11. Our thoughts are with the families and friends of the victims.
As a contribution to the ongoing relief efforts, we provide our leading speed reading software with 10 % discount. Cick here to enjoy www.fastreader.net
Needless to say, this made me pretty irritated, so I decided to check their website. On their download page was the following:
Our thoughts are with the families and friends of the victims. As a contribution to the ongoing relief efforts, we feel it is important to provide businesses and individuals with effective tools to absorb and utilize more information in a shorter period of time.
Our speed reading software will be offered with 10 % discount from this site for 1 whole month until October 12, 2002.
*boggle* Am I dreaming this? Pinch me please. I rarely, rarely bother replying to scam-spam, but this one really hit me. So I replied:
Seana Media Capital,
I'm absolutely disgusted at this attempt to exploit tragic events such as this to capitalize on your speed-reading software. It would be a more admirable effort if you would, for example, donate 10% of the proceeds to the volunteer programs in New York City instead. I will surely be advising all of my contacts to avoid your services.
So, today I'm telling a friend of mine about what happened, and suggested he check out the site for himself: http://www.fastreader.net.
A couple seconds pass, and he tells me: "Page isn't loading... DNS error".
"Hmmm", I think, "how surprising."
Yep.. indeed the site is down. So both disgusted and curious, I figure I'd check out the WHOIS info. Here's what is says:
Registrant:
not
RatuschPlaza
Roterdam, n/a 32456
NL
Domain Name: FASTREADER.NET
Administrative Contact:
winter, jerri jer_winter@hotmail.com
RatuschPlaza
Roterdam, n/a 32456
NL
3245656
Technical Contact:
winter, jerri jer_winter@hotmail.com
RatuschPlaza
Roterdam, n/a 32456
NL
3245656
Billing Contact:
winter, jerri jer_winter@hotmail.com
RatuschPlaza
Roterdam, n/a 32456
NL
3245656
Record last updated on 21-Sep-2001.
Record expires on 11-Sep-2002.
Record Created on 11-Sep-2001.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.GOYES2001.COM 205.162.50.120
NS2.GOYES2001.COM 66.40.42.171
Yeah... you're seeing that correctly... the domain record was created on September 11th, 2001.. on the national day of tragedy. Coincidence? Maybe....?
I could comment further, but I really don't think it's necessary.
-Ken