About JUNKBUSTERS

  About Junkbusters

Junkbusters Corp. was founded in April 1996 in Green Brook, New Jersey, with the mission of helping people get rid of junk messages of all kinds: spam, telemarketing calls, unwanted junk mail, junk faxes, and more. The web site junkbusters.com is a leading consumer resource on the control of junk communications and the protection of privacy. At the end of 2004 the site and other assets were tranferred to its sister company Guidescope Inc.

  About Junkbuster's founder

Jason Catlett founded Junkbusters and is now an Executive Vice President of Guidescope Inc. [Small Photo] [Big, JPEG] [B&W, TIFF] A computer scientist with a Ph.D. in data mining, Dr Catlett is a leading experts on the interplay between technology, marketing and privacy.

Dr Catlett is frequently quoted in major newspapers, magazines and trade journals. He has appeared on 60 Minutes and many times on leading national television programs including MSNBC, C-SPAN, Fox, and CNN. He has testified on privacy issues before the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Commerce and the National Governors' Association. He is a member of the advisory board of Privacy International.

Dr Catlett taught for several years at the University of Sydney, including courses on technology and privacy. In 1992 he moved to AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ, where he continued work on data mining large databases. He has served as an external examiner of Ph.D. candidates at Rutgers University, on the Editorial Board of the journal Machine Learning, as a visiting scholar at the department of Computer Science at Columbia University, and as a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In addition to many academic publications, he has also contributed articles to trades such as Privacy Journal and the direct marketing trade newspaper DM News. And yes, he still gets annoyed by the occasional telemarketing call.

He welcomes your (non-bulk) email, or send him a message via our web form.

  Colophon

We are deeply grateful to the people who provided the free software tools that we use to produce and run our site: Linux, SSH, Apache, Perl, libwww-perl, GD, Weblint and others, and to the Free Software Foundation. The HTML generator that produces our pages was custom-built for our site and is not commercially available.

No Microsoft products were used in the construction of this site. Our content has not been tested on animals.

Our site is best viewed with any browser. We have tried to make it look just as good on text-only browsers, and to be usable through speech synthesis interfaces. If you have any suggestions to improve its compatibility, please tell us.

We use these reference works.

1. The C Programming Language (ANSI C Version) by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie.
2. The HTML Sourcebook by Ian S. Graham.
3. Although superseded by Perl 5, we still often consult Programming Perl by Larry Wall and Randal L. Schwartz.
4. The ORA handbook TCP/IP Network Administration by Craig Hunt.
5. A Handbook for Scholars by Mary-Claire van Leunen.
6. The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White.

  Junkbusters privacy policy

Because we have long encouraged all organizations to publish a privacy policy describing their information practices, we long ago published our own. Our practices were clear from the start: openness and explicit consent.

1. We refuse to accept any information considered private. (That's the reason we don't use encryption in the forms where personal information is submitted.) We use personal information only for the purposes we specify.
2. We provide visitors to our Web site with the tools that show them the information that we (and almost all other web sites) collect and store. This includes the URLs and times of access to each page of our site, the referring URL, the IP address and hostname of the computer making the request.
3. We don't push cookies.
4. We accept feedback by email and web forms, but personal identification here is voluntary. Other than the data and methods listed above, we don't collect any other personal information by any other means.
5. You have the right to access, correct, withdraw and destroy any personal information we hold about you. Most of these requests are handled through the same form that used to volunteer the information. For other requests please use our feedback form. Non-routine requests, particularly those entailing physical mail may require the payment of a nominal fee.

For a long list of links to the privacy policies of other organizations, see our links page.

  Our patron saint is Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

The purpose of our web site is to show people that they have it in their power to achieve independence from junk communications. We immodestly compare this task to the historic achievement of Thomas Paine: in 1776 he anonymously authored the pamphlet Common Sense, which quickly led Americans to decide that they could and should declare themselves independent of the British monarchy (and of British corporations).

Of course, this grandiose analogy has several obvious flaws: we will not change the political future of the world; we concern ourselves only with non-governmental threats to liberty (whereas Paine was concerned only with governmental ones); and our English is not nearly as good as his.

Rather than talk about ourselves, we prefer to use this space to honor Paine, in the best way we know: by quoting some of his wonderful prose. (Page numbers are from the Thomas Paine Reader, edited by Michael Foot and Isaac Kramnick.)

THE CAUSE OF AMERICA is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances hath, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in the Event of which, their affections are interested. (p. 65)

Who the Author of this Production is, is wholly unnecessary to the Public, as the Object for Attention is the Doctrine itself, not the Man. Yet it may not be unnecessary to say, That he is unconnected with any Party, and under no sort of Influence public or private, but the influence of reason and principle. (p. 66)

To conclude, however strange it may appear to some, or however unwilling they may be to think so, matters not, but many strong and striking reasons may be given, to shew, that nothing can settle our affairs so expeditiously as an open and determined declaration for independence. (p. 102)

We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. (p. 109)

We fight neither for reverence nor conquest; neither for pride nor passion; we are not insulting the world with our fleets and armies, nor ravaging the globe for plunder. Beneath the shade of our own vines are we attacked; in our own houses, and on our own lands, is the violence committed against us. (p. 111)

Copyright © 1996-2005 Guidescope Inc ®. Copying and distribution permitted under the GNU General Public License. 2005/01/15 http://www.junkbusters.com/aboutus.html