This morning, I tried again, and the site was still not available. Strange, it just disappeared.

So where do you turn; Google, of course. I typed in “what happened to wheresgeorge” in the search window in Safari. I was a bit surprised to find I wasn’t the only one asking the question.

Here are the top hits for that search. The real answer seems to be found on the WheresGeorge forums. I’ve never really looked around there, but they are working fine. Hank (the founder of WheresGeorge) has made a few posts. He seems to think the site is swamped because of a recent Yahoo article. But there have been “news” stories before, so it isn’t quite certain this is the source of the extra traffic.

In any event, Hank posted a link to an alternate site which does seem to be working fine. Temporarily use: WhereGeorge.us.

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Quick update:  WheresGeorge.com is back since sometime yesterday.  However, entering bills and some operations seem “slow”.  Database updates seem the same as always.  For now the “surge” must be over, and things are getting back to normal.

No, I’m not talking about some big furry man-like creature that lurks in the wilderness.  But this was almost as scary.  I’m talking about the Bigfoot, “email address for life” service.  Well, it was alive until I killed it, anyway…

For the past couple of years, the spam received at my “Bigfoot for life” address was on the rise.  The spam that got through far out numbered the “good” mail that was received.  I spent hours tracking, logging, and charting the spam versus good.  What was worse, and far more frustrating, was that I had upgraded my account to “premium” membership.  This entitled me to increased spam protection.  Yea, right!  I think I overlooked the fine print that must have said ‘I pay for the privilege to receive all the spam I can handle, and then some.’

I threatened to delete the service, but was drawn in by that “email address for life.”  A few months ago, I did finally cancel my premium membership.  The spam protection was virtually non-existent, and I only had been using the address to receive a few mailing list emails a day.  I quit giving out the address long ago, when the spam started to become unbearable.

All of the other free email services, including Hotmail, Yahoo, and particularly Gmail, have far better spam protection.  I would forward the Bigfoot email to one of these services and literally less than a few spam messages *ever* made it through to the inbox.  That is saying a lot, since Hotmail was always notorious for spam.

The proverbial straw was when I received what (to me, anyway) appears to be a valid email from my Bigfoot account, to my business account.  Of course, it was spam.  I looked at the headers, since I just assume the ‘from’ was spoofed.  From my limited expertise however, this came from my Bigfoot account!

I tried to log on, and found I couldn’t remember my password, or it had been changed.  I was able to find a ‘contact us’ web form, but I’ve gone that route for issues in the past.  I think it goes off into a black hole.  I asked for my account to be disabled / deleted immediately.  That was yesterday, and still nothing today.  In the meantime, I did locate my password and was able to log in.  I didn’t even look through the webmail (which in hindsight was dumb) but immediately deleted the account.  Bigfoot is dead…

In the beginning, it was a good concept and actually worked well.  However, I think they got in to the business of selling their email addresses or something, as a source of revenue.  One interesting note, which makes me believe this, was a sign-on notice.  It said I had a “free” account, and would have to accept some terms of service, which allowed third-party mailings.  What a rip-off!  I think that borders on criminal.

But it’s all behind me now.  I know there are other redirections / forwarding services.  But with the proliferation of Gmail and others, why do you really need them now?

Bigfoot, RIP…

Diagnostic-Code: smtp;550 This account is not allowed...jczech@bigfoot.com

A test message to ensure Bigfoot is really dead.