I have a very disturbing situation

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Michcool125

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Hello all,

I’ve been reading this site for quite awhile now, and recently I had a very shocking event happen to where it forced me to make a user name and start becoming active in these forums. I Hope this is the right place to post this.

Anyways, I’ve meet this new priest a few months ago. He was different, he was wise a witty, funny, smart, understanding. He went out of his was to donate to the poor, argue with the bishop who said he gave away to much money, etc. This priest was golden, I thought.

However, a few days ago I was working on his computer to help him with email troubles he said he’s been having. Well, I was adding his old email to his outlook when there were a few messages (only three) and I glanced at what it said, and it said something about how it failed to receive the correct information for his order on “camboys” and their was were pictures of naked guys. He proceeded to saying he has such a problem with spam, but I can’t understand how it’s spam when it identifies your name saying they had trouble processing the order. I’ve just been feeling like i’ve been hit in the guy for over a few days now. It’s like, if I can’t trust him, who can I trust?
 
Well, I googled CamBoys. Homosexual webcams. If you are quite quite sure of what you saw, then I’d get the *^&% away from him…your family, too.

The only real question here is whether you tell your Bishop or not.

In my diocese, we’ve tried telling the Bishop things he needs to know. He never believes anything lay people tell him…he’s useless in this regard…and my guy is supposed to be “orthodox” and “uncompromising” (yeah, right…).

Good luck.
 
I’ve received plenty of spam claiming to be about something I ordered. That is one of the hooks, to put in the title line something about “your order” so that you click on it. I’ve even had the title have an order number in it as well.

His name is easy enough to get, depending on how he uses his actual name in conjunction with his email account. If it is his work email, it could easily have his name on all outgoing correspondence. (my work email does).

I understand your shock at seeing emails like this, but you could just as soon see the same on my computer (well, my spam blocker is better now than it used to be and I am more judicious with who gets my email address), but I am not doing anything fishy whatsoever, unless you count hanging around religious sites like this one. 🙂
 
I’m so sorry you have encountered this situation. I have a good friend who is a computer tech for many parishes in our area. We have often discussed how he needs to handle it if he encounters things inappropriate but not illegal. He hopes he will not encounter it on any of the parish, priest’s, or deacon’s computers. So far, so good on that count. It is a tragedy that you are encountering it.

He deals with it all the time with his other customers though. He lets them know that it is often porn sites that let in the most viruses. He often doesn’t want to help people where he has encountered a lot. He just can’t, it is just too much. His worst experience was encountering a pornographic picture of his own cousin while fixing her boyfriend’s computer. He says those images are just burned into your brain and you can never look at the person the same way again.
 
You know why my antennae are up, right? A priest with gay porn spam? Dog bites man.
 
Pug’s point does make sense though. Getting such a mail does not NECESSARILY mean that the order has actually taken place.

Difficult situation. I don’t quite know what to say…

Kathrin
 
Give him the benefit of the doubt and mind your own business. I get trashy e-mail all the time that I don’t want, and I don’t kn ow HOW I goit on some of these e-mail ad lists.
 
If you think that much about as i can see, You was helping him with him Email?? Do you have his password??
try logging in to his email account and see if he gets other stuff like that.
Sound wrong but personaly i would like to know as would the rest of your parish.
Who knows what hes upto.

:knight1:
 
I think either one of two things. Either your priest is leading a double like or else you are making this up as a first post to see what sort of response you get from the people here.
 
This is a very delicate situation. But I have to come to the priest’s defense. I was one of the “early adopters” of the internet. Back in the early days, when everyone had to us a telephone modem to connect to a service like Prodigy, I was showing a co-worker how it works. I logged in and there was my email, claiming that I had ordered some very pornographic material. I was stunned. My co-worker saw it, and there was nothing I could say to defend myself, even though I was completely innocent. I’ve NEVER ordered any pornographic material, let alone the horrible and illegal kind that was described. FROM ANYONE. EVER. Either on the internet or from any other source.

My co-worker never looked at me the same way. I was mortified. I’ve never shown anyone my email list ever since.

I was so embarrassed by the situation that today, almost 15 years later, I still cringe when I think of it. I just thank God that she had the good sense not to spread any rumors. Now that everyone knows about spam, I just hope that she recognizes that what she thought she had discovered about me was, given the rest of what she knows about me, so improbable as to be obviously wrong.

But the doubts sown in people’s mind by this type of thing are so strong that even now I am unwilling to post this under my usual name.

So my message is this: be careful, very careful, about assuming things based on this one incident. I was the victim of just this sort of thing. But I am completely innocent.

But it is still a good idea to keep your eyes open, too.
 
AnonymousOne said:
This is a very delicate situation. But I have to come to the priest’s defense. I was one of the “early adopters” of the internet. Back in the early days, when everyone had to us a telephone modem to connect to a service like Prodigy, I was showing a co-worker how it works. I logged in and there was my email, claiming that I had ordered some very pornographic material. I was stunned. My co-worker saw it, and there was nothing I could say to defend myself, even though I was completely innocent. I’ve NEVER ordered any pornographic material, let alone the horrible and illegal kind that was described. FROM ANYONE. EVER. Either on the internet or from any other source.

My co-worker never looked at me the same way. I was mortified. I’ve never shown anyone my email list ever since.

I was so embarrassed by the situation that today, almost 15 years later, I still cringe when I think of it. I just thank God that she had the good sense not to spread any rumors. Now that everyone knows about spam, I just hope that she recognizes that what she thought she had discovered about me was, given the rest of what she knows about me, so improbable as to be obviously wrong.

But the doubts sown in people’s mind by this type of thing are so strong that even now I am unwilling to post this under my usual name.

So my message is this: be careful, very careful, about assuming things based on this one incident. I was the victim of just this sort of thing. But I am completely innocent.

But it is still a good idea to keep your eyes open, too.
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I remember them days of getting filth email sent without consent…
But now we have spam filters built into our clients and virus detectors etc…
 
This kinda spam gets through at times depending on the ‘cloak’ the mail uses.

I have googled it and others have received the same messages through their email.

Give the Priest the benefit of the doubt as I am sure if he was into dubious stuff he would not let you within 10 feet of his computer.
 
bpbasilphx said:
Give him the benefit of the doubt and mind your own business. I get trashy e-mail all the time that I don’t want, and I don’t kn ow HOW I goit on some of these e-mail ad lists.
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Dittos! I get this junk too and don’t have the computer geek wherewithal to rid myself of it. Cut him some slack on this one.

John
 
If you are bright enough to work on a computer, you should be bright enough to know that even sweet little grannies get porn spam sent to them.
 
I think it would depend on the reaction. Did the priest immediately defend the situation and act as shocked as you were? Was he appalled by it?
 
kage_ar said:
If you are bright enought to work on a computer, you should be bright enough to know that even sweet little grannies get porn spam sent to them.
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Exactly! I think this is a gross overreaction to a problem that EVERYONE has at some point or another. If you look in my spam folder I can guarantee you there is garbage like that and I’ve NEVER EVER been to a porn site in my life, nor have I ever had one single porn pop up window.

I say mind your own business and do your job - and unless you have some other evidence that something is not right then just let it go.

My goodness - how many good priests have to be pulled through the mud over something they have no control over? Are you really ready to ruin his life over some SPAM?

~Liza
 
It’s funny, I have about as average an email account (3 of them, actually) as you can have…I don’t get porn spam…not in months and months. Back when I got porn spam, it was heterosexual porn spam. Now all I get is the occasional viagra spam.

Like I said, my antennae are staying up.
 
Hi Michcool125 and welcome to the forums.

My humble apologies if I am wrong, but I don’t buy your post. Too many inconsistanceis for me. For example:
Michcool125 said:
…He went out of his was to donate to the poor, argue with the bishop who said he gave away to much money, etc…
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If he is an order Priest then he has a vow of poverty and nothing to donate. If he is a diocesan Priest then he has a small stipend (and possibly moey from family) but no Bishop would ever argue that a Priest is doing too much to help the poor. Doesn’t fly for me.
Michcool125 said:
…Well, I was adding his old email to his outlook when there were a few messages (only three) and I glanced at what it said, and it said something about how it failed to receive the correct information…
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I have updated a number of email programs. It is an automated process and the most you would look at would be the headers from the email. You would not be able to see any info unless you opened the email and read the body and there is no legitimate reason to do that if you are switching over mail. Sorry, that does not sound right as well.
 
Heh…perhaps my antennae were pointed in the wrong direction.

Will be interesting to watch the outcome.
 
I say give the priest the benefit of the doubt. If you were in outlook and the preview pane was open then yes, you would obviously have seen what the email contained, but it was not necessarily truly addressed to him.

But I would say give the priest some credit. If he were really responsible for it it would probably be hidden. My friend who is the tech has to go searching in random files because that is where the viruses hang out. That is why he fears opening certain folders. He knows what the real ones will be entitled.

Finding it in email, while disconcerting, isn’t necessarily his fault. After thinking about this thread a little more, I was more wondering about the priest’s reaction. From your description he seemed to have reacted on the level of someone who is NOT guilty. He seemed a little embarrassed and then he moved on. He didn’t rant and try to defend himself. The phrase, “Methinks he doth protest too much,” comes from the guilty denying, and denying.

He denied it once and then moved on. That says something important.
 
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