Is this Spam?! was (RE: PLEASE HELP! looking for a good web host

for my new site) 
Reply-To: en0...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Kevin Brideau)
References:  <3a1f038e$1...@news3.accesscomm.ca>
Organization: The National Capital FreeNet

Jon (jma...@aol.com) writes:
> Mike,
> 
> I highly recommend LFC Hosting, the host of my website for the past 8 months.  
> I have been extremely satisfied with their service.
> 
> I have been with quite a few other hosts, most of which took several days to 
> answer my e-mails and went down several times a month.  None of the hosts that 
> I have been with have come close to what my current host (LFC) provides when 
> it comes to customer service (their live support chat is awesome), reliability,
> automation, advanced features and capabilities (like their control panel, 
> which is just amazing), e-commerce support, and highly competitive plans.
> 
> Anyway, I received an e-mail from them several weeks ago saying they will pay 
> you $100 USD immediately just for switching your site to their service, which 
> means you would be paying next to nothing for their service for the first year 
> or so, it's definitely a deal to jump on.  Normally, this offer would normally 
> sound too good to be true, but I have grown to trust this company and I know 
> that they are doing some major marketing right now, so I'd definitely say to 
> try them out at least.
> 
> I'm not sure if the offer is still on, but I believe the e-mail said that it 
> was for the remainder of 2000.  Anyway, I would contact off...@lfchosting.com 
> for details; I highly recommend going with this host because, as you said, it 
> is way to easy to get ripped off by a semi-legitimate hosting company, and I 
> was incredibly fortunate to find this one :)
> 
> Also, I should mention that most hosts promise a seamless transfer of your 
> website, but this is the first host that I have been with that actually 
> followed through, so I wouldn't worry about the job of transferring your 
> site, they make it REALLY easy.
> 
> I highly recommend LFC Hosting to anyone doing business online, even if they 
> are already satisfied with their current host (they don't know what they're 
> missing); I intend to stay with this company for years to come, they have 
> helped my business tremendously.
> 
> 
> Hope this helps,
> 
> Jon


Is it just me, or does this seem to be *very* clever spam?  First, let's
note, that this post is extremely off-topic (unless "Mike"'s website is
about ascii-art -- something he didn't say).  Also, in my newsreader, the
response showed up before the original article.  Plus there's the way the
two posts are worded -- they seemed to use the same "letter" format, not
something one normally finds on the Usenet.

I have to admit, this is pretty ingenius.  The first "post" was written
from an anonymous hotmail account.  The second is from an "official" AOL
account.  If someone in the group tells Mike to buzz-off and go take the
question to a relevant forum, he can just never answer.  And the follow-up
author can't be told to do the same.  *He* was just reply-ing.

Man...Spamers can Evolve.  Weird.

-KMB
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