[cobalt-users] Re:CobaltRacks.com Nightmare

[Charlie Summers <charlie@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 5:32 AM -0500 11/4/01, Bradley Caricofe is rumored to have typed:

> Not only were we nearly destroyed by this occurence, CobaltRacks.com CEO
> Mark Bayliss says his company cannot even prove this happened based on
> their logging resources and that he is "taking my word for it".

   Frankly, I'm not surprised they are so shoddy. When I was looking around
to lease a machine earlier this year, I contacted them and didn't receive a
response. Turned out that I have records of this outfit spamming my company
on the NetSol-listed role account in October of 2000 while I was leasing
elsewhere, and now have them in my /etc/mail/access file as:

## cobaltrack.com/visuallink.com; 206.151.68.0 - 206.151.69.0
##  note also visuallink.com holds other blocks, including 206.151.88.171
##  which is a dial-up...check ARIN in the event future spam is
##  received, and consult email from 10/2000, 06/2001
206.151.68      572 We do not accept mail from spammers
206.151.69      572 We do not accept mail from spammers

   ...rejecting mail from them _and_ their customers. (I have the dates
listed there so I can lookup the original spam should I need it; yeah, I
retain records of spam and the resultant spam complaints. I have no sense.
But it did come in handy for this review.) Bayliss denied that his company
ever spammed, even when presented with the original message and detailing the
precise track the mail took (from their dial-up machine, through their mail
servers, to my server), and even noted that the signatory of the spam (Tom
Surmiak) was still employed by the company as of June of this year as a
salesperson.

   Anyone who hosts with these guys is hosting with a company who has sent
verified unsolicited commercial email. Certainly none of us wants to reward
spammers...the only reason I ended discussions with the company.

   And yes, I apologize for continuing this off-topic thread, but I wanted to
show another negative aspect of this company to hopefully save someone else
from dealing with them.

         Charlie