Subject: [Asrg] Unhelpful "helpful" solutions

From: "Alan DeKok" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 07:53:09 -0500

Can I ask the chair to remove this person from the mailing list?

> From: [email-masked]
...
> 
> The email you sent to me with the subject line as above has been rejected due to the fact that my email account is protected from SPAM by MailKey.   You are not (yet) on my 'A-list' of approved senders, and the mail did not contain a valid MailKey. 
> 
> To successfully send the email to me, you need to obtain a MailKey from the MailKey website. 
...
> The service is free, is very easy, and should take less than 1 minute to use!

  Posting to the list should NOT be taken as an excuse to spam people
with advertisements for commercial services.

  Alan DeKok.
_______________________________________________
Asrg mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg

---

From: Brad Templeton <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 11:20:31 -0800

> with advertisements for commercial services.

Actually, it might be interesting to draft an RFC that simply gathers together
principles already established in other RFCs that might apply to anti-spam
tools.     For example, it looks like this user has violated the rule that
says that autoresponders should not respond to mailing list mail, except
for well-formatted bounces, which may cause the user to be removed from the
list.

Or did you get this when you replied to a mailing this person sent, and thus
were sending mail directly to him?
_______________________________________________
Asrg mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg

---

From: Chuq Von Rospach <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 13:31:28 -0800

> for well-formatted bounces, which may cause the user to be removed 

Worse. Mailkey is a service the user has subscribed to -- it's a 
whitelisting company, one of many that are springing up. So at some 
level, you can't blame the user unless you expect him to know the 
details of how the service operates. Blame the people who wrote it for 
not following basic protocols, when in fact their job is (or should be) 
knowing them and getting it right.

free service, premium upgrades, and they own your email account, too. 
what a bargain.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 18:26:52 -0500

>   Can I ask the chair to remove this person from the mailing list?

While we're at it, can we pass the hat to hire a few people from <insert
ethnic extra-legal entrepreneur group here> to "explain" to the bozos
responsible the concept of only sending *one* notice to each recipient,
not one for each piece of mail??? ;)

/Valdis (who just got ANOTHER one. Gaak)

---

From: Florian Weimer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 00:46:02 +0100

> for well-formatted bounces, which may cause the user to be removed from the

See draft-moore-auto-email-response-00.txt.  I don't know what has
become of it.
_______________________________________________
Asrg mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg

---

From: Kee Hinckley <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 23:32:28 -0500

>/Valdis (who just got ANOTHER one. Gaak)

Yeah, well be thankful you don't post to this group as much as I do.

I was actually pissed enough that I've gone to the trouble of getting 
a mailkey so that I can flame their support email address.  (Which, 
by the way, they do not mail a mailto link on their site, although 
they do other addresses, and which they specifically say will take a 
long time to get a reply to... because of demand.)

Here was the process.

Go to web site.
Click on Contact Page.
Click on button indicating that you want to talk to them.
Enter the email address to which you wish to talk, and the email 
address from which you will send (twice).
On the next page you will see a graphic.  Type in the result.
On the next page  you will be given a number.
Send email to [email-masked], with that number somewhere in the subject.

In return for all of this work, I get the privilege of reporting 
several bugs to them.  But the truth of the matter is that there is 
no way I was going to go to all of that trouble just to report that 
their software is buggy.  (BTW, if you have them send one of your 
messages to you, the resultant email message has an introduction with 
typos.)  The real reason I put up with the garbage was for the 
pleasure of telling them that they have done an excellent job of 
demonstrating to this group how *not* to write anti-spam software.
-- 
Kee Hinckley
http://www.puremessaging.com/        Junk-Free Email Filtering
http://commons.somewhere.com/buzz/   Writings on Technology and Society

I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.
_______________________________________________
Asrg mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg