From: "Bernard Shifman"

From: "Bernard Shifman" <bernard@shifmanconsulting.com>
To: matt@haughey.com
Cc: legal@shifmanconsulting.com
Subject: Content about Bernard Shifman
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 09:40:39 -0500

Dear Sir,

Would it be possible for you to remove the content about me from your website.  I'm really not a spammer and I was just looking for a job. Many of the responses that are posted from "me" have been doctored to me me look like a jerk.  The content on your site is causing problems for me as you can imagine and it would be very kind of you to remove all content about me from your site.  Why would you want to prevent me from getting work?  I don't understand....

Thanks,
Bernard
773.391.0595

Bernard Shifman amazes me, he really does. I'm fully convinced he's learned nothing from this moron spammer adventures. I've searched this site, and can only find one (tangential) reference to him, and there's one reference on MetaFilter.

But look at today's email above. He's convinced he wasn't spamming when he sent out (by my estimate, at least) 20,000 unsolicited resumes as word doc attachments to any and all email addresses scraped off the web. I got several copies, all to addresses found somewhere online, and from talking with people that also got copies, his email scraping bot sent messages to anything found in text that resembled an email address. Then he goes into the sob story of not finding work. If you google for "Bernard Shifman" you're gonna get 1900 matches, most all pointing to his screwups, so much so that eradicating it from the web is going to be completely impossible.

I can understand someone new to online etiquette making a few mistakes along the way, and I do feel bad for people out of work having a tough time finding new positions, but Bernard here has screwed up so often, so consistently, and for so long, without learning from or even admitting he's ever made a mistake, that I have no sympathy for him. Two things in this email also clinch it: the last two sentences, added as some backhanded guilt trip that I'm keeping him from finding work, not his own actions, and the CC line. He openly taints his request with a subtle legal threat, not learning in the past year that barratry is no way to gain understanding from others, not to mention the fact he hasn't sued anyone he has threatened.

While getting back up on the horse after you've fallen is usually a good plan, at some point when you've fallen hundreds of times and kicked the horse several times, it's time to think about other modes of transportation.