Internet harassment?

Shooting Industry, Oct, 2004

I have a question for dealers. Between our shop's two Web sites, I have six e-mail addresses. Only one of them is associated with our firearm business. Guess which one gets daily virus attacks and multiple messages with nonsense content? Am I being paranoid to suspect the anti-gunners have distributed the FFL e-mail addresses around for their scumbags to harass us? Am I unique, or are other dealers experiencing this?

Only a few of the garbage e-mails are SPAM in the traditional sense; most of them contain just nonsense text, and a great many masquerade as rejected mail. On the worst day, I got over 300 e-mail messages. Only one of them was legitimate.

Thanks to Earthlink. I have, in addition to proxy mail intercept, firewall and virus protection. I can block any particular domain (not just the sender) from ever getting through. I have perhaps a hundred sites permanently blocked. Earthlink has detected and automatically deleted four virus attacks in the last two days.

Have you received any similar reports from other dealers, or are you experiencing the same? Your exposure should be far greater than mine. I'd appreciate your help.

Bruce Dow

Dow Arms Room

Dade City, Fla.

Bruce, we do get our share of wacko e-mails, but nothing on the scale you report. Are there any other dealers who are experiencing this type of problem? You can contact me at russ@shootingindustry.com.