This is obviously a *personalized* SPAM message. I'm sure the sender has no idea what/who Pedtalk is. You should not respond to the original sender as this will verify that your email address is valid with this spammer and you will get even more junk mail. Just bite you lip and hit <DELETE> Just so you know, the site referenced wants to sell you airline tickets or something like that. Danny At 09:27 PM 7/26/98 -0400, you wrote: >INTERNET: wrote: > > > I'm sorry to interject this on Pedtalk, but I was sure you would want to > > know! > >Wrong. This is supposed to be a listserv related to *pediatrics*. Am I >the only person who is NOT interested in yet-another-scam? > > > There is a company that is going public called Travelzoo. > >This bears all the hallmarks of a scam. Besides "Travelzoo," I've heard of >two other companies in the past couple of months who were doing this, and >Peter (my programmer husband and scam/hoax debunker) found a few more while >researching Travelzoo. And bless his heart, he found a message from >someone else who had shared the "good news" explaining just what all these >companies are actually getting with this scam: addresses of "regular >people" to send out spam Email. (This is apparently fairly easy to do, >Peter occasionally sends out messages with a return address like >.) Her address had been used as the "from" on spam >mailings and she'd been reported to her Internet provider. He also found >FAQs on Travelzoo and another company, both based in the Bahamas >(eliminating using the SEC to check them out) and with identical FAQs >(promising, among other things, to not sell your Email address -- ha! -- >and not even saying the company WILL go public, just that it might). > > > Yahoo did the same thing when they went public (7/14/98 Yahoo closed at > > $186.50). > >Your source for this information? I've been investing in publicly-traded >stocks for over ten years and never heard this. What's Yahoo's symbol? >Legitimate companies do NOT need to give away stock to create interest in >their IPO (Initial Public Offering). Companies like Genentech saw their >stock price go through the roof even when they had never shown a profit and >didn't even have a ready-to-market product! Companies "go public" when >they need additional funds to expand, so giving stock away would be >counterproductive (to say the least). > >Come on. First of all, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. >Second of all, anything that urges you to sucker others in is even less >likely to be legit. Finally, no scam should be promoted here! > > > > Sylvia Steiger RN SFNP BS NFPP, Cheyenne Wyoming USA > > who will NOT be signing up for "free stock" > > > > **************************************************************************** Daniel Frieling mailto: Pediatric Software Intl., Inc. http://www.compukid.com CompuKID, The Pediatric Toolkit Computer software for primary care pediatrics (800) WELL-CHILD (800-935-5244) Outside the USA: (802) 651-0809 ****************************************************************************