I ♥ SFF.net

I’ve had a membership on sff.net, an online group for science fiction/fantasy writers, for about 12 years now. Last night I got a reminder of why I’ve kept my account, and my primary email, there, even though I no longer write SF.

About 7:00, the phone rang. “This is Jeffry Dwight from SFF,” a man I’ve known as Jade since the pre-WWW days on GEnie network said. “Did you just ask me to reset your email password?” I hadn’t. Someone had emailed him from my address via the online contact form and asked to reset it. He thought that was suspicious, since I’ve been changing my own password periodically for over a decade, so he picked up the phone and called me to verify, protecting me from a hijacked account.

I challenge you to get that kind of service from Comcast. Or Gmail, for that matter.

Now the puzzle to be solved is who did it. Since it came from a web form, Jade couldn’t trace it. Immediately I checked to make sure my Paypal account hadn’t been broken into (again), thinking someone might be trying to divert verification notices. So far I haven’t discovered anything, but I know to be alert for problems.

You don’t have to be a writer, or even a fan, though that does make it more valuable. If you’re interested in signing up with this great group, membership including email, web space, private IRC, and private newsgroup access is $9.95 a month/$99.50 a year. It’s worth it just for the incredible spam filters – with an address I’ve used publicly for 12 years, I get 1 spam a week. That’s it.

Great service, great people. Can’t beat that at any price.

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