The "verification number" allows our system to distinguish orders submitted
by humans from "orders" submitted by automated systems on the internet
(another type of spam). Automated systems are unable to read the "handwritten"
verification number as humans can and thus this extra step prevents the automated
systems from clogging our system with "fake" orders. It is difficult
to tell where on the internet these "fake" orders are coming from but
the last time it happened, most of the fake orders included what appeared to be
a return address of onemoreaddress@hotpop.com. So it appears to be a scheme
to harvest email addresses for a mailing list by feeding random information into
order forms all over the internet, including ours. One might argue that
we should approach hotpop.com and inform them of what appears to be inappropriate
behavior of one of their members, but we really cannot be sure that a hotpop.com
user is involved only that his address appeared. And even if a hotpop.com
user is involved, without ever knowing of hotpop.com before, we can't know if
we would be wasting our breath to bring up the issue. Furthermore, if a
hotpop.com user was able to sabotage our order system, then any other user on
the internet could have done the same thing, which means that there was something
wrong with our order system, which is what this new verification number has fixed.
Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.
Sean Barton
s b 6 4 @ m o o n s t i c k . c o m
Moonstick Co.
www.moonstick.com
507 E. Jefferson St.
Quincy, FL 32351-2505
United States