stolen domain?

[Mary Beth Faccioli]

Hi all,
The following is a message I received from an
acquaintance - does anyone know anything about this
sort of thing happening?  Is there any advice I can
pass on to her?  

Thanks as always,
Mary Beth Faccioli
Reference Collection Assistant
Georgia State University Pullen Library


Begin forwarded message:
I've been on the net day and night this past week
since I learned indirectly 
that my website had been turned into a porn site. The
web page was a 
freebie from a member of Society of Children's Book
Authors..etc. who 
designs them. He offered to do it for other members so
I accepted. This was 
about 3 years ago. Actually, I more or less forgot
about the fact it 
existed. Well, a week ago I got a general letter
addressed to SCBWI members 
online alerting them that Bergenstein.com (the domain
of my site) had been 
pirated by a group outside the country and turned into
a porn site. They 
are trying to extort money to get his domain back. He
is in litigation 
about all this. 
I'm furious that first, HE didn't contact me about it
at all (and still 
hasn't) when it first happened. Second, SCBWI still
has yet to contact me 
directly--don't you think they would go out of their
way to help out the 
members involved? I can't get anybody on the phone or
email. They're scared 
of litigation from us who were affected, I'm sure. 
So far I'm only in contact with 2 other authors about
this. One of them has 
her website on her book jacket so the publisher has to
recall all of them 
and reprint them. A real mess. I have found that my
author page is linked 
to every library and school in the country. I've
checked that most of these 
places have filters, but one filter which a lot of
libraries and schools 
use does not block out this site. There are two main
providers of authors 
on the web which schools get their links from and so
far I haven't been 
able to get in touch with either of these as it's
summer and school isn't 
back in session yet..one's the U. of Calgary and the
other is Rutgers. So 
I'm going nuts here. Any advice you can give I will
welcome. You 
know more about computers than most people I know. 
Nancy



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