Path: visi.com!news3.mr.net!mr.net!winternet.com!not-for-mail
From: drechsau@Geeks.ORG (Mike Horwath)
Newsgroups: winternet.general,winternet.gripes,mn.general,mn.online-service,alt.internet.services,alt.internet.access.wanted,winternet.announce
Subject: Warning to users
Followup-To: winternet.general,winternet.gripes,mn.general,mn.online-service,alt.internet.services,alt.internet.access-wanted
Date: 10 Aug 1996 22:50:17 GMT
Organization: StarNet Communications, Inc
Lines: 119
Approved: the-original-admin@winternet.com
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <4uj3n9$565@blackice.winternet.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: jacobs.geeks.org
Followups-To: winternet.general,winternet.gripes,mn.general,mn.online-service,alt.internet.services,alt.internet.access.wanted
X-Warning: Winternet is not the network you were used to.
X-Folgers: Winternet has swapped your normal customer service for Folgers Crystals.
X-Saying: Privacy should be preserved above all else.
X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 950824BETA PL0]
Xref: visi.com winternet.general:1887 winternet.gripes:976 mn.general:30074 mn.online-service:1431 alt.internet.services:85344 alt.internet.access.wanted:44340 winternet.announce:41
This message is against the current Winternet staff and my 2 partners,
Michael Frankowski and Kevin Mathison.
It is not a nice message, nor am I just ranting to see my typing flow
on my screen.
If you do not wish to read this message, please, continue on and have
a good day.
If you do wish to read this message, keep your mind open. Do not
become emotional over my statements, or anyones followup statements.
This is not up for argument, it is posted in the interest of all
customers currently with Winternet, and potential customers who were
thinking of signing up with Winternet. (it might also be something
you want to consider when choosing an ISP for yourself. privacy is a
big issue, whether on the 'net or in real life, it means just as much
to all of us)
If you continue further, I thank you.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
I do not believe that your email is private at Winternet.
I do not believe that your files are private at Winternet.
Below is proof that my mail is being read by the current staff at
Winternet, without my permission or knowledge. They have also changed
my password, my home directory, my shell, and removed files from my
home directory, again, without my permission.
[4:59pm] 159 [~]:mixer% finger -ml drechsau@198.174.169.11
[198.174.169.11]
Login name: drechsau In real life: Mike Horwath
Directory: /dev/null Shell: /bin/otcsh
Never logged in.
New mail received Sat Aug 10 14:09:51 1996;
unread since Fri Aug 9 16:54:37 1996
No Plan.
[4:59pm] 160 [~]:mixer%
From my work account, I fingered my account at Winternet, an account
that has been shut down since early Thursday morning. (the finger
above was done at 5pm on Saturday, 8/10/96)
They also removed my .forward and my private security files.
Since Thursday morning, I have not received any email addressed to
drechsau@winternet.com. I had a .forward setup to send this email to
my work account and to my home UNIX system so as not to utilize any
disk space at Winternet and to help transition myself away from the
network I had originally built and operated.
As you can see above, my email was read by someone on Friday, more
than 24 hours AFTER my account had been shutdown by Kevin Mathison and
Michael Frankowski.
Michael Frankowski refuses to talk with me on any topic. This has
been said to my face by Carl Mathison, who is the 'office manager' of
Winternet.
Kevin Mathison is being lied to by his new employees. His employees
state one thing to myself and to customers, but report a completely
different story to Kevin himself.
My account was shutdown because I was logging into 'abominable' to
check out what is going on with the network that I and my staff had
built. 'abominable' used to be the machine on my desk when I was the
president and main admin of Winternet. This machine was also the home
of irc.winternet.com, an EFNet server for IRC. With all the crashing
that is happening at Winternet, without notification to myself, a 1/3
owner, or to the customers, I decided I needed to step up my
monitoring of the network. I logged into abominable to check the
status of it before moving onto other UNIX servers on the network. No
breach of security occurred.
When talking to Kevin Mathison about this on Thursday night, he said
he was going to call Michael Frankowski to discuss this matter and to
get my account back online. He also claimed to have told me that I
was not to log into 'other' machines. I responded that I had not been
told anything about not checking out the network and UNIX servers. He
did not tell me to not do it either after the fact.
I just talked to Kevin Mathison about todays notice of a breach of
privacy, and his words are that no one should be reading my mail as it
should be private, and my forward should have stayed in place.
My opinions are that my files are being messaged with (of which I have
proof dating back to 7/5/96, and I posted this evidence publically
towards the end of July), my mail is being read (proof above, and
suspected after another round of removing my files before, sometime
mid July), and that neither Michael Frankowski, nor Kevin Mathison,
wish to do anything professionally in any dealings with myself or the
old staff.
Time and again, they have shown that customer service is not #1, and
that the privacy once offered by myself and my staff is not something
they wish to pursue.
Others have also posted publically about having email sent in their
name that they never sent, that email has disappeared, and that their
files where edited or changed without their permission or knowledge.
I would have just taken this information lightly because of emotions,
but now, I tend to believe that the new management is indeed doing
such activities and has been since the very beginning.
A word to the wise: be careful who you do business with, you never
know what you are paying for, or if your private mail and files are
actually private.
If anyone of you out there reading this sent me email addressed to
drechsau@winternet.com, I suggest you resend it directly to either my
work account (drechsau@visi.com) or to my home server
(drechsau@geeks.org) so that I will actually receive it.
--
Mike Horwath IRC: Drechsau LIFE: Lover drechsau@Geeks.ORG
Home: 612-588-7740 3000 James Ave N, Minneapolis, MN 55411
Please note that the content below was last updated on 14 October 1996; the content of this page is being preserved as-is for posterity. The only changes made since that time were (a) to update the page markup to current standards, (b) to update internal links as hosting platforms changed or to point to archive.org when available, and (c) to obscure email addresses located throughout these pages (except for USENET postings). Needless to say, many of the links to external sites are no longer functional after 20+ years.