Just got a weird email -- maybe Today.com related??

I just got an email with the subject line "Hey Terri." I think the only places I've used the name "Terri" were on my old today.com blogs and on my own LOST blog.

The email was sent to an email address I haven't used in over a year, so it couldn't have been someone contacting me via my own blog, as my address there is current.

The message said:

Hi Terri are you doing good? I wanted to let you in on this , I have came ahead quite a bit since I started a week ago! Just have a read [There was a shortened bit.ly link here.]

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they find laughable. -- Anonymous

I looked up the link on KnowURL.com (cool resource, by the way), and it had a history of distributing malware from Russia!! I'm glad I didn't click on it!

It's all quite puzzling. The only people I can think of who have the combination of the name "Terri" and my old email address are our old friends (cough) at Today.com.

Maybe there's another explanation, but I can't think of one off-hand.

Anyway, if you get any weird messages like that, don't click on the link!

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So how are you all doing? Hope everyone is doing well. What are you up to these days?

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They're baaaaaack

They're at blogdog.com

With our blogs being at http://yourblogname.blogdog.com

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Today.com is dead!

I saw a comment that Today Exile David Gerard posted in a few places that today.com appears to be dead, with the domain name sold to MSNBC for the Today Show.

Ding, dong, today.com is dead ....

And we no longer have to worry about duplicate content.

I wonder if they paid the people who stayed with them to the end.

Anyone have any inside information?

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Anyone else FORBIDDEN to all today.com sites?

For some reason, my computer can't access/read/check out any today.com site, either browser. Oh, I can use a different computer and get through but it seems that today.com has blocked my computer from accessing at all, even to read a today.com blog (someone else's).

Anyone else have this happen or am I just their least favorite person?

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Oh wait, I found ANOTHER one ....

They put a link in the left-hand sidebars of the Exile blogs (but not in the non-Exile blogs) that says "Blog Directory." It's under the heading "Cool Sites," which makes it look as if we, the authors of the blogs, are personally recommending that blog directory to our readers.

If you click on the "Blog Directory" link, first you will get the "Passion Search" pop-up ad, but if you wait about 15 seconds, you will get a second pop-up. That one is from "Adult-free-web-cam.com" with links to "Sexcam," "Gay Web Cam," "Livesex," and "Porn Video."

And, yes, you guessed it, adult-free-web-cam.com is registered to Amosely Corp. of Toronto, the site owned by the owners of Today.com. (And the directory itself, blogmad.net, is registered to Mainstream Mails -- sound familiar? -- at Today.com's Pennsylvania office address.)

I've seen two versions of this pop-up. They both have a photograph of a topless woman on the top, next to the words "Free Porn In Your Email."

Here's a screenshot. My graphic skills aren't very good, but if the image is too small to read, if you click on it, you should get a slightly bigger copy. (I blacked out the topless woman to keep this site PG.)



(edited 9/27/09 for clarity)

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Now it's an ad for "Passion Search"

If you go to your old blogs and click on any of the internal links -- such as the categories listed below the blog titles or the links to the comments -- you get a full-page pop-up ad (which gets around my browser's pop-up blocker) for a dating site called PassionSearch.

Again it looks like they are applying the ad ONLY to the "Exile" blogs. I did a spot check of several of the Exile blogs and several of the current blogs, and the PassionSearch ad showed up only on the Exile blogs.

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Look what today.com did now -- this is unbelievable

Poetic Shutterbug wrote, in the comments section of the previous post, "I found the post and when I clicked on the link to get to the post a new page came up with porn photos and links. That happened three times. I couldn't even get to the post. So, I guess they are up to their old tricks again. It's pretty sad."

I tried it with my old blog, and found the same thing. It's really unbelievable. I feel as if they had taken a dump all over my work.

I took screen shots:



The porn ads take up more than one screen. If you scroll down past that, you get to my blog -- but it's covered by a translucent black overlay, so it can't be read:



If I hit "page down" 36 times (!), I finally get to the end of the overlay:



I tested a few of Today's currently-active blogs, and this didn't happen, so it looks like they did it only to the Exile blogs.

Perhaps they think it's a joke.

It may be worth reporting it to Google -- Google hates when you have this kind of misdirection.

Editing to add: If you want to report them to Google,here's the place to do it: Google spam report

P.S. I'm wondering if there might be a defamation lawsuit in this. They are hurting the reputation associated with our pen names by making it look, to web searchers, as if we are ourselves were porn spammers. I put a lot of work into building up the credibility and reputation of my writing name, and I don't want to see it destroyed by these clowns.

Editing again to add: I just looked up "Celebrity-frenzy.com" which is the name on the top of the porn-ad box, and (why am I not surprised?) the domain is owned by Amosely, which is one of the Today companies that we've come across before.

Update 9/16/09: Today.com removed the overlays this morning! I just love stories with happy endings. A big round of applause to everyone who made this happen by putting the pressure on Today.

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