by Dean Garrison, DC Clothesline:
After the 4th report of this in the last 2-3 weeks, I thought I had better get the word out.
I can personally verify that I have been receiving messages like the one you are about to read for roughly 2 years, but they seem to be coming more and more frequently now. Someone is ramping up the censorship and using a method you don’t often hear or read about.
I received this message in my email on Sunday:
hi dean,
i go to dcclothesline everyday to check the news however this morning when i tried i got a message saying You Have Been Banned! im not a member, i dont comment, *and never have to either one, im not even a subscriber* you guys dont even have my email address until now! i thought you might like to know this information so you can combat it. yours is not the only site thats trying to do this. i had to go to a search engine and find your site and then go to it from the browser *not google owned* before i could access it. then i went over to dcdirtylaundry to find this contact information because i couldnt find it at dcclothesline. i dont know whats going on with that but please for the rest of your reader base, post an article about whats happening if you dont fix it.
thanks
(name withheld)
This problem is not limited to DC Clothesline because at least one of the messages I received, within the last month, was regarding my other website (www.dcdirtylaundry.com).
It is important to note that my two websites are hosted with different web service providers.
The sites have different advertisers so I doubt it is a virus attack that can be pinned to a single advertiser.
DC Clothesline actually changed hosting companies several months ago but the messages were being received, occasionally, before that change was made. It can not be traced to one hosting company.
I have been unable to get a screenshot of these messages as of yet, and it might be hard to do since the messages seem to be of the “popup” variety.
The details are sketchy but it surely seems like those that want to censor conservative sites have been ramping up their efforts recently.
On more than one occasion I have been told that it happened when my reader was leaving Facebook to enter our website but I am not sure that is true in all cases. I have not asked enough questions to claim that this is true in most or all cases.
Keep your eyes open and if you get a similar message, bear in mind that it may not be genuine. I can’t speak for other websites but we don’t ban anyone from our sites.
