One-man service operated entirely by Chris Caputo, a divorced ex-Microsoft employee confirmed by the UFF (and also Usenet warez veteran "John_S", Usenet MP3 veteran "SixDarts" and Usenet cracks veteran "340") to be "akula", a nym with a long history of malicious lying, netkopping, trolling, sockpuppeting, spamming, stalking, proxy hijacking, pedophile befriending, FBI snitching and remailer abuse. The corporate address of Altopia, "1700 7th Avenue, Suite 116", is the address of The UPS Store and the prior corporate Altopia address, "10115 Greenwood Avenue North", is the address of Greenwood Self-Service Storage. Altopia's business line is an answering machine with Caller ID enabled, and Caputo's history includes stating he won't pick up the phone unless he recognizes the caller's number. Caputo, who assumed the identity of spammer Steve Repsis for a period of several years, refused to confirm the physical location of his server and has changed his primary alter-ego cyberstalker-troll-netcop pseudonym on Usenet from "akula" to "Bill". Multipart binary retention as of September 15, 2012 was approximately 15 days (compare this to e.g. Giganews, which on that same date had approximately 1,502 days). As of January 2010 Caputo continued his charade of championing customer privacy but quietly added "Google Analytics" and "Urchin Tracker" javascript code to almost all of his site's web pages, two pieces of which brazenly snatch the visitor's IP address and announce it even if javascript is disabled. We believe Altopia is, bar none, the single most dangerous NSP in existence today. (More...)

Sporting an "acquired" photo of some other company's corporate office building on its homepage, DataBasix is a one-man operation run out of the home of Gary Burnore. An established veteran of alt.usenet.kooks, Burnore frequently uses vulgar language and behaves more in the manner of a troll than a news administrator. In early 2010 Burnore unplugged DataBasix entirely without warning to subscribers, and thereafter went into hiding for several months, as a result of a libel lawsuit brought against him by a New Jersey attorney. Until recently Burnore was required by law to have his name appear on the North Carolina Sex Offender Registry following cross-country relocation after a conviction for violating California Penal Code §647.6(a), "Annoying or Molesting a Child". Webmasters in Germany, Belgium and Croatia, like Burnore, deceptively used the same bogus "corporate office building" on their homepage. (More...)

And yet another! one-man band, "Octanews" is located in Minnesota and run by Michael Horwath. (By "one-man band", we mean the entire company is actually one person who typically refers to himself as "we", "us", "our", etc. on his business site. For example when Mike Horwath takes a pasty shit, the "Octanews Customer Service Department", the "Octanews Tech Support Team" and the "Octanews Abuse Division" all shut down temporarily <G>). A liar who has injected numerous posts containing profanity, Horwath was fired from Winternet for incompetence and blacklisted from entering the Winternet building. Said Tom Keeley of StarNet Communications, Inc.: "Mike Horwath was relieved of the day to day administration of Winternet for failing to follow mandates of corporate concern handed down by the board of directors. The failure to follow these mandates were increasingly jeopardizing Winternet's hopes of a future."
 
A struggling, substandard operation offering horrific retention and a newsadmin who apparently learns as he goes, UFF sources report "Octanews" was largely funded by one or more third-party speculators. It appears that should Horwath at any time become unavailable, the business runs on auto-pilot until something invariably goes wrong, nobody's there to fix it, and it freezes. One user reported that "Octanews" could not be contacted because Horwath's beeper was out of range. (More...)

Yet another one-man band, "Newsreader" is Kenneth Welch, a Virginia resident who posts under the nym "Curt" and is married to Linda Patterson, a middle-aged woman he refers to as "Pig" who shaves her head in freak, gothic shapes. An apparent friend of Chris "akula/Bill" Caputo (see above), Welch offered seemingly free access to Leslie "TheApostle" Paulin, a known troll, liar, nymshifter, stalker, proxy hijacker, remailer abuser, sporger and pedophile defender who has committed almost every form of Usenet abuse possible. Paulin, who admitted being attracted to young teens and vehemently claimed an 8-year-old boy could consent to having sex with a 29-year-old woman, boasted he paid nothing for accessing Newsreader "illegally". Welch, after being shown Paulin's PGP-signed brag, did nothing except get angry and defensive at those who brought the matter to his attention! We then deemed Welch an adversary and added his shady server to the list of those we believe pose a significant security threat.