This message comes from the two-person team that administers your News Boquete mailing list, namely Penny Barrett and Bud Huber. Penny is the "public" person associated with News Boquete, and Bud is the "back room" person running the servers and other techie geek stuff.
There are two different topics in this message.
The first topic is that our News Boquete mailing list system is experiencing some technical difficulties right now. The problem began late Tuesday and is likely not to be resolved completely until tomorrow (Friday). However, we are running on backup systems, and there has been no interruption in the free community service that is provided. For the technically inquisitive among our subscribers, the issue is related to Internet access for the primary server. The backup server is located in a different venue, and thus is not affected by this outage.
As a result of reverting to our backup server, we had to go back to the subscriber database dated May 7th. There are less than a handful of people who may be affected, but in the spirit of full disclosure, some very recent additions or deletions to the subscriber list have been temporarily suspended. Once the primary server is back online, the subscriber list will again become totally current and then be updated with changes as usual. No action is needed on your part, and other than a few people being affected, things continue as normal. Again, until the primary server is back online, we have temporarily frozen all changes to the subscriber database. We hope that you can understand our cautious approach to system administration.
A side comment for those of us living here, we all know how long it takes to get things fixed. That is part of the charm (curse to some) of life in Boquete.
The second topic is about the alternate service provider that has appeared in recent months who is trying to mimic what we do and how we do what we do. They are using a variety of email address, most of which are on Gmail.com, although some Yahoo.com addresses have been used.. The primary email address that they use right now is <newsboquetebusiness@gmail.com>. Note the similarity to our email address, which is <newsboquete@gmail.com>.
That group of people are making themselves appear to be Penny and myself. Many, many of our subscribers have inquired about and some have even complained to us about selling or providing our mailing list database to this group of people. Please rest assured that the News Boquete subscriber database has NEVER been provided to anyone; its integrity has never been violated. I can speak with authority because I am the person who worked with Hershel back in the early days of this community service when it became formalized as a free community service. This alternate group of people is harvesting email addresses from every source they get their hands on and are causing a lot of discomfort by a lot of our community.
Going further on this topic, repeated attempts to be removed from the spammers mailing list have been unsuccessful by everyone who has contacted us. It appears that the profit motive of the spammers is stronger than ethical behavior. Note a significant difference between the two mailing lists: News Boquete that Penny and I administer is a FREE community service, and the spammers have a profit making venture. Public discussion of this situation first was distributed via our mailing list on April 22nd in a message by Dianne Heidke and pre-pended with comments by Penny Barrett. The situation has not changed much since these spammers went into operation earlier this year.
Earlier this week in reply to yet another complaint/inquiry by one of our subscribers, Penny and I received an interesting approach by one of our subscribers. He said that he is contacting all of the businesses that advertise via these spammers to inform them that he will not do business with them because of the spam email that they are producing. I find this an interesting and creative idea. You get decide what action if any that you may take.
The bottom line here is a issue of trust. I ask that you believe me when I say that the News Boquete mailing list has never been provided or sold or in any manner made available to anyone. Never! Only two people have access to that information -- Penny and myself. And all of our approximately 1,300 of our subscribers we hope will continue to rest assured that their privacy is extremely important to both of us, just as it is to you.
For more information about the News Boquete mailng list, please refer to http://www.boqueteforums.org/index.php?showtopic=4292.
Now go out and enjoy the incredibly beautiful weather we have been experiencing of late. The rainy season is coming.
Sincerely,
Penny Barrett and Bud Huber
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The above message was distributed by News Boquete, a subscription-only community service.
News Boquete's ONLY email address is news.boquete@gmail.com.
For more info, visit www.boqueteforums.org/index.php?showtopic=4292.
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