The e-mail contained the complete transcript of a warning that he received from his company.

Seems that, on his break, he decided to have a quick look around feoamante.com and was traced by the company's software spy program called Websense. Websense wrongly identified Feo Amante's Horror Home Page under its categories of 'Cult/New Age' and 'Non-Traditional Religions'.

Apparently this is red flagged by Websense as a "bad thing". Anyone who has ever come to this site knows for a fact that there is no Cult or religious tones to this site what-so-ever. There never has been any such affiliation to this URL. This is simply the inaccuracy of Websense itself.

Websense sent the following e-mail to to the visitor's employers:

From: Remedy Mail
Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2000 3:52 PM
To: ( Company Websense Case Worker )
Subject: Case (...), Severity III , has been assigned to you.

View case at http:// ...
and move to WIP. Name: *
Description:CLIENT IS BEING "WEBSENSED" WHEN TRYING TO ACCESS FEOAMANTE.COM WEBSITE.

Of course, the whole point of buying Websense is to confront and possibly discipline ( that includes firing ) any employees who send off alarms ( feoamante.com scored a Severity III ! ) on Websense. Naturally the Company Caseworker sent off a note to the feoamante.com visitor. This is it:

*,

Websense lists this site under its categories 'Cult/New Age' and 'Non-Traditional Religions'. I don't make judgement calls on these sites. However, if you're prepared to justify access to this site based on your business need, then I will put you in touch with XXX, the Vice President of Human Resources. XXX has the authority to make the final determination.

( Employer's Websense Case Worker )

The feoamante.com visitor replied with the following:

( Employer's Websense Case Worker ),

Hmmmm. I don't have a business need . . . I wanted to show someone the movie reviews . . . but I'd definitely like to complain to Websense. The categories 'Cult/New Age' and 'Non-Traditional Religions' most definitely do not apply. It's a fan site for people who like horror movies, short stories, novels, etc. There's nothing remotely religious or "cultish" about it. Whom do we sue?

*

The use of the * protects the identity of the visitor, likewise the " . . . " protects their personal information. The terms ( Employer's Websense Case Worker ) and XXX protect the company for which * works.

As a corporation they pay value for value, money for work, and they have every right to monitor their employees' performance. The issue or fault here lies directly with Websense themselves, for having wrongly labeled feoamante.com and having exacerbated this mistake by wrongly alerting their customers with this innaccuracy.

However, we are all human, even those among us who write buggy software. Perfection is humanly impossible; how fast you can address and resolve an error is of paramount importance and that's what we are about to look at here.

* followed up by immediately contacting Websense directly. * explained the mistake and situation and, within a matter of hours, had this reply:

Thank you for your inquiry. The site that you inquired about was not in the correct category or the IP address was previously associated with a site of categorizable material (feoamante.com has never been associated with the specified category -feo). The site has been categorized in the category Entertainment.

Please allow approximately 3 days for the changes to be included in the database updates. Any time you have any questions about a site in our database or sites that you feel should be in our database you can email the entire URL, by going to http://www.websense.com/products/addasite/index.cfm. We will review the site for possible categorization or other issues and reply to you with any actions taken. TROUBLESHOOTING TIPS: If the Websense or blocked message still appears after a few days, please clear your browser cache and then try accessing the site. If the site still appears blocked, please make sure the most current database is running. Contact your Network Administrator for this. Thanks.

Jeremy Shafer
Web Analyst
Websense, Inc.

We will wait the 3 working days (which should be Tuesday the 26th of September) and keep you aprised of the results.

September 26, 2000

The results? Jeremy Shafer was true to his word and feoamante.com is no longer listed in the "Red Flag" section of their software.

Should you ever have trouble visiting feoamante.com as a result of a spy or security program that wrongly identifies the site, please contact us at once. All complaints will be investigated.