The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,355 groups with 5,062,000 members across the globe. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer (them's good people). Membership is free.

Some freecycle members recently received the following message from the moderators:
There is a particularly nasty spam doing the rounds of Freecycle® members.


An individual calling herself Sharon Baker (though other names, and a variety of email addresses have been used) is joining Freecycle® groups all over the world. She (if, indeed, it is a she) does not post anything to the groups but instead receives messages from them and harvests (records) the email addresses of the senders.

After a while, she emails members of the group alleging that a moderator is "cherry-picking" items from the group by responding to offers from moderated members BEFORE approving the post. She appends (forged) email correspondence between her and a (usually unnamed) moderator in which the moderator complains about not being given an item which she offered. The email expresses her disgust at this behaviour and asserts that she intends to leave Freecycle® and join another group instead.

Of course the whole purpose of the email is to discredit Freecycle® and encourage people to join the other group (of which she is one of the owners/moderators)

We do not believe that this individual, in any of her guises, is a member of this group, but We thought We'd draw this to your attention in case she "slips under the radar" at some stage in the future (and in case you hear of this indirectly via other groups).

There is no evidence that the events referred to in the email have taken place on any group. They certainly have not occurred on this group or been replicated across the many, many groups whose members have been targetted by this individual.