Kieran Healy

Membership has its Privileges

Julian got this invitation yesterday:

Subject: NOT AN AD:  Invitation to Be a Fellow of the
North American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 15:48:22 -0400
From: North American Academy of Arts and Sciences
<invitation@academyofartsandsciences.org>
To: Undisclosed.Recipients@Princeton.EDU

You have been recommended by a Fellow of the
North American Academy of Arts and Sciences
to join our learned society as a Fellow.  The North
American Academy of Arts and Sciences is a not-
for-profit community of professionals from the
various disciplines of the Arts and Sciences. Your
Fellowship costs you nothing. To accept our
invitation and become a recipient of the many
benefits for which our Fellows are eligible, please
fill out our online registration form at:

http://www.academyofartsandsciences.org

Your Invitation Code is:

A19-18

Thank you for considering the Academy's invitation.
We look forward to welcoming you as a lifetime
Fellow of the North American Academy of Arts
and Sciences.

One thing we can be sure of is that, whatever it is, the North American Academy of Arts and Sciences is not the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

I got one, too, on August 21. Having become eternally wary about all things Spam, I have been trying to research the academy. The only other awards or memberships I have been offered have been for disco-roller skating competitions. Though obviously unworthy, I would hate to miss this opportunity. I am a custom gutiar bulder in San Francisco. Do you have any other info? By the way, judging from your web log, I like your politics.
Thanks,
Danny

I did a WHOIS search to see who owned the domain name, and it turned out (as far as I remember) to be registered to someone in Hungary. So my strong feeling is that you should apply Groucho Marx’s rule: you don’t want to join any club that would have you as a member. Especially one that would solicit members via random spam.

I got mine on 9/6/02.. I’m going with the three stooges mentality too. Cheers.

I also got one of these invitations. I am by far, not material for this type of thing. My biggest questions is, if this is genuine, why don’t they share the name of the person nominating you? I think I’ll pass but hope to see more comments about this.

I received one of these today. The DNS resolution for the domain is no longer valid.

-David

NAAAS Redux

A bogus association brings me hits.

i got one awhile ago but was too lazy to research it right away. i also immediately thought of the groucho marx joke – it’s dead on in my case. but i know part of me deep down was thinking, ‘hey, i deserve respect for what i do, right?’ the decision maker for me was the part mr. frank jumped on: if it’s legit, how can you find out why you’re invited to join? the good news is, if you do a google search, this page is the second thing to come up, so it might help anybody who’s considering forking over their info to the spammers.

Google returns only 18 references; if the operation was legit, you’d expect hundreds of references to it. IMHO, it’s a con.

A: It’s been at least partially tracked to Hungary,

B: The operator of this “arts and sciences” academy can’t spell “psychotherapist” properly,

C: The application used to generate the HTML is Namo WebEditor v5.0(Trial). No slam against Namo, but don’t most professional webmeisters use non-trial software?

D: The Online Courses page seems to lead to nowhere.

I smell something that likes cheese and has a long tail …

I received one of these invitations and it is very odd being that it is an invitation to professionals and I am a very poor student. What gives??

I got one in Paris. Could you explain me what’s the trick?

The URL is working now…. but still the site still has some difficulties. Difficult to say if it is legit.

http://www.academyofartsandsciences.org/

These guys really went to alot of trouble if their sole intent was to get a spam list. I think is somewhat like the Who’s Who book listing invitations I used to get all of the time. They will just try to sell you something later. P.S. This page came up near the top on a Google search, if you put the name of the organization in quotes.

We all agree it is at most, ONLY exactly what it portends to be:
A group of people who distinquish themselves to themselves, as a group of people who want distinguishment.

I think the listing of honored members (or something), where they can’t even provide anything but rather nebulous credentials of their members…(“has degress from everywhere…” and the cancelled checks to prove it!), says enough.

Finally, you know….getting invited to participate in a reputable group generally includes agreeing to do a lot, not receive a lot!

I received one of these emails as well. I did a little research and found the following:

It appears to be hosted off a RoadRunner (Time Warner Cable) account in New York in the city of Rochester.

The domain name is registered with a non-existent address in Hungaria. The Technical, Admin and Billing Contact are simple the initials of the “organization”. No real person’s name to contact is available. There is no phone number listed for the domain.

Below is a list of the people associated with the “referrals”

A9-115MelissaZimolka5 Williams AvenueScotiaNY12302USmelatpeace@aol.comPsychologyEducation
A9-128DonaldLough Jr222 Paul AveSyracuseNY13206USdlough2084@aol.comChemistrySociologyPsychologyMedicinenull
A9-115MelissaZimolka5 Williams AvenueScotiaNY12302USmelatpeace@aol.comPsychologyEducationMedicinenull
A9-128HaroldTilton124 SuperiorP.O. Box 134Tower HillIL62571USapache1963@yahoo.comLiteratureHistoryWeb DevelopmentSendHallofFameInfo
A9-128BarryFishman1062 E. Buean Vista DrivePalm SpringsCA92262USfishbc@aol.comEducationMarketingSoftware Engineeringnull
A9-128HaroldTilton124 SuperiorP.O. Box 134Tower HillIL62571USapache1963@yahoo.comLiteratureHistoryWeb DevelopmentSendHallofFameInfo
A9-125SallyBinghamPO Box 146HoneyvilleUT84314USmonkeygirls@yahoo.comChemistryBiologyPhilosophyMedicinenull
A9-127AndyAndrews16 Midland AvenueBerwynPA19312USatownandr@aol.comLiteraturePrinting, Illustration and BookbindingPublishingWeb Development
A9127Willieschlickeisen1714 Roosevelt StreetBastropTexas78602-2429USschlick@onr.comPaintingArt HistorySociologyHistorynull
A9-128CesarAnchiraico87 Fulmar LaneAliso ViejoCalifornia92656-1746USCAnchiraic@aol.comMathematicsnull
A9-127KimberlyMaggio24425 Woolsey cyn rd #188West HillsCa91304USsillkaa@aol.comLiterature

The form for signing up points to:
http://www.mycgiserver.com/~naacademy/processfellowship.jsp

so exploring:
http://www.mycgiserver.com/~naacademy/

brings up the following additional interesting info:

http://www.mycgiserver.com/~naacademy/account/confirmed.txt

http://www.mycgiserver.com/~naacademy/account/activated.txt

http://www.mycgiserver.com/~naacademy/academyfellows/loginrecord.txt

http://www.mycgiserver.com/~naacademy/academyfellows/recommend.txt

http://www.mycgiserver.com/~naacademy/academyfellows/certificate.txt

Perhaps there’s some useful info in those files in case anyone wants to look through them all.

Seems unlikely that a “prestigious” organization has to use a cable modem to host their site, utilize AOL and Hotmail to distribute their email and use a third part CGI service to handle their forms.

In my opinion, this person is collecting potential “clients” for a third party.

I got one of these flattering ‘Academy’invitations too – flattering, until I spotted it was addressed to ‘undisclosed recipient’. Is is that easy to send spam?!

Have a look at the URL below:
http://www.partnerslevit.com/NewsRoom/WhosWho/AESNewEnergy/BIG/NetDesignPartnership/fellow.html

I have received this also….
:)

What I want to know is how they got my address, e-mail addy, etc…

grrrrrrrrrrrrr