Essential Estrogen

There are somethings in life that are just inevitable: Taxes. Broken Hearts. Death. Poop. Breathing. And especially Joe Jobs.

The anatomy of a "Joe Job:" A group or individual registers an internet domain. The domain is set up and is a legitimate site -- store front, information, blog, photo gallery or whatever. The point is that the site is going about its business without purposefully stepping on anyone else's toes. Everything is going along fine until one day thousands of "your email was undeliverable" messages and "out of office auto-responder" messages begin arriving. Congratulations, you've just been the victim of a Joe Job.

Those folks -- the ones named after the canned precooked meat -- aren't the most honest. And, in order to complete their task -- which typically involve sending thousands upon thousands of junk email -- they don't mind breaking a few rules. The rule they break that gets under my skin more than any other is when they take a legitimate domain, such as EssentialEstrogen.com, and use it for their own purpose.

When an unsuspecting email user or spam filter encounters the message, they get angry at the person sending the email. The canned meat folks know this, so they elect to hide behind someone else's good name.

This is what happened last night. When we returned home from an evening dinner at Applebee's (the Fiesta Lime Chicken there is amazing) my email client was hard at work. Over 4,000 undeliverable or refused emails had already bounced back at me -- emails that weren't sent by me and did not process through our server. (From the header information, it appears they originated in Italy, but I wouldn't bet my life, or even 10 bucks, on it.) I made a few changes on the email server so it would refuse any mail to accounts that did not exist. And, yes, it's something I should have done a long time ago. I was simply lazy.

When everything was said and done, I received 8,732 undeliverable or otherwise refused email messages. Adding insult to injury they were of the "enlarge your sexual organ" variety. So, if any of the recipients find their way here to complain -- and a few have already begun to email their frustration -- please know that no one associated with our domain is responsible. We hate it as much as you do.