Quote from Forum Archives on May 8, 2001, 7:23 pm

Posted by: dhaley <dhaley@...>

Homeschooler's please read the following message...it IS important. It's
not spam....Deanna
----- Original Message -----
Subject: Fw: Important Message from Home Education Magazine

> Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 23:30:08 -0700
> Subject: Important Message from Home Education Magazine
> Message-ID:
>
> We interrupt your regularly scheduled email reading to bring you this
> important emergency announcement from the publishers of Home
> Education Magazine. Please do not hit your delete key until you've
> heard us out. This is not a test and it is not a SPAM...
>
> HEM has been hit with one of those unforeseeable web crises no web
> master wants to endure. While I can't guarantee the appropriateness
> of the links on all the sites I recommend in HEM's Online News, we
> have always ensured that the links from HEM's websites were suitable
> for you and your family to view. Right now, we can't make that
> promise for one of our websites. Please read the information below,
> and know we are working to restore our safe web home where all
> homeschoolers can feel welcome. I will update you on the resolution
> of this situation in the June newsletter, and I do apologize for this
> inconvenience.
>
> Carol Narigon, Editor
> HEM's Online News
> www.home-ed-magazine.com/wlcm_hemnewsltr.html
>
> *******************
>
> Date: Sun, 6 May 2001
>
> This is a public service message from the publishers of Home
> Education Magazine.
>
> We're asking for help from the online homeschooling community to get
> ALL links and bookmarks to www.home-ed-press.com changed to
> www.home-ed-magazine.com as quickly as possible. The old
> home-ed-press URL is currently linked to a pornographic website
> administrated by a company in Armenia.
>
> WARNING - Please DON'T check out that old home-ed-press site out of
> idle curiosity, because it is a "virulent"* porn site that will keep
> opening multiple windows until your browser or your whole machine
> crashes. If you're really *that* curious to see what's there, please
> save everything before clicking the link. *virulent - highly
> infective, rapidly spreading, deadly
>
> This message is on our website at
> www.home-ed-magazine.com/badurl.html. We will post any updates
> and additional information on that page.
>
> A little history: We created the home-ed-press.com domain name when
> we were publishing books on homeschooling several years ago. We sold
> the book publishing part of our company when we decided to focus on
> the magazine, but we kept the home-ed-press.com URL mirrored to our
> home-ed-magazine.com site because so many homeschooling websites
> showed to the old URL as their link to Home
> Education Magazine's many features and free services.
>
> But somehow the registration on the home-ed-press.com domain name
> expired (we're still trying to figure out how it expired without our
> knowledge), and it was bought by a wholesale company, which leased or
> rented it just last week to an overseas company which linked it to a
> porn site, obviously to capitalize on the high number of links.
>
> So here we are, with a big mess on our hands: A widely linked
> homeschooling URL linked to a gnarly pornography site. We are working
> to straighen out the mess, but we need help. All the help we can get.
>
> PLEASE - If you have a link or a bookmark to the old home-ed-press
> domain name on your website please change it to home-ed-magazine.com
> as soon as possible. Please check the sites for your local
> homeschooling support group, your local public library, your favorite
> online resources - anyplace that might have a link to Home Education
> Magazine's hundreds of pages via the old home-ed-press.com URL.
>
> Webmasters: We offer the following advice from Ann Zeise, who first
> notified us of this problem:
>
> Here's how to find out if you have any home-ed-press links on your
> site. Go to the search engine at www.altavista.com. In the
> search field put the following parameters (exchanging my
> www.gomilpitas.com URL for your own root directory in the last part):
>
>
> link:www.home-ed-press.com
> -url:www.home-ed-press.com+url:www.gomilpitas.com
>
> If your site shows up at all on Altavista, you will be able to see if
> any pages have the errant URL on them. Then just go into your copy of
> these pages and do a ""FIND and REPLACE" and replace
> "www.home-ed-press.com" with "www.home-ed-magazine.com" -- They kept
> all the rest of the directories and paths the same, so your link will
> now go to its original destination. (Do check in case you just happen
> to have a link to a page they have removed for some reason. All of
> mine were corrected this way.)
>
> NOTE: using the first two parameters in this sort of search is a good
> way to find out who is linking to you. Just put in your own URL after
> "+link:" and "-url:". -Ann Zeise
>
> Please forward this notice to homeschooling and alternative education
> email lists, online newsletter editors, support group lists,
> educational reference lists - anyplace Home Education Magazine's
> award-winning website might be linked.
>
> This message is on our website at
> www.home-ed-magazine.com/badurl.html. We will post any updates
> and additional information on that page.
>
> Thank you for whatever you can do to help!
>
> Mark and Helen Hegener, Publishers
> Home Education Magazine
> HEM@home-ed-magazine.com
> www.home-ed-magazine.com
>