Subject: [Asrg] Public Informational Response To Peter Kay

From: "Sabahattin Gucukoglu" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 22:54:44 +0100

In response to an automated request for me to verify my email address as 
being that of a human by first clicking a link and then by completing a 
"Simple" task of recognising the text in a graphic image and then typing 
the characters into a form on the page thus displayed:

Dear Mr. Kay,

I, like yourself, despise unsolicited electronic mail.  While the 
principle basis for the measures you are taking to prevent spam from 
reaching you are bound to provide certain guaranteed results, there are 
arguably many disadvantages to what you are doing.  I am afraid I am the 
victim of one of them.  Being totally blind, I cannot use a graphic to 
confirm my existence to you.  Assistive technology, like a spam robot, can 
only read the text of your emails and web pages.  You might compose 
another, less biassed technique - ask the user a random question.  Perhaps 
randomly generate a sum in words to which the human must answer - EG: 
"What's ten plus twenty-five?"

Please don't take any of this message in offense, but your email asking me 
to confirm myself as a human almost went in the analysis folder for much 
scrutiny and possibly would have had me write a complaint to your ISP; it 
had the suspicious edge of the classic spam validation procedures and an 
appropriate amount of oily friendliness, in this case well-meant.  A quick 
few lookups in the DNS, chasing all the MX references, and a further 
moment's moral consideration in realising that what you were doing was not 
advertising or anything characteristic of spamming put away these 
suspicions in favour of amazement.  I had never seen anyone actually do 
this and implement a working system.  Does it really do what you want?

The email address that triggered this response was <postmaster@sabahattin-
gucukoglu.com>; I wanted to let you know, automatically as it just so 
happens :-), that your mail contained HTML data - which, alone, represents 
a pretty accurate measure of spamminess.

I am sorry to have inconvenienced you, or other unconcerned or 
uninterested list members, by writing to you in this way.  I regard email 
as a very valuable means of communication and would surely like to know 
you and others here as well as possible, if only as a side-effect of our 
wish to combat the whole problem of spam.  Again, my views are not meant 
in offense.

Best wishes,
Sabahattin

-- 

Thought for the day:
    Book (n): a utensil used to pass time while waiting
    for the TV repairman.

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Sabahattin Gucukoglu
Phone: +44 (0)20 7,502-1615
Mobile: +44 (0)7986 053399
http://www.sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/
E-mail or MSN Messenger: <[email-masked]>

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---

From: "Peter Kay" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 13:53:32 -1000

I'm honored that you took the time to put together that email and I will
continue the conversation with you offline. The ASRG is not the place
for personal communication.

We are planning a future version of our software to accommodate blind
email users and I appreciate your input.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sabahattin Gucukoglu [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 11:55 AM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: [Asrg] Public Informational Response To Peter Kay
> 
> 
> The email address that triggered this response was 
> <postmaster@sabahattin- gucukoglu.com>; I wanted to let you 
> know, automatically as it just so