Subject: Someone's not getting their email.....

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 12:43:15 -0800

I got the following stuff in response to a mail I sent to the IETF list.

Since I have no idea whether this is an email harvester or a "legitimate" 
antispam tool (the form gave no indication, and no links to more 
information about its owner), I don't have enough information to decide 
reliably to respond to the message.

This posted here in the hope that someone will recognize the username and 
tell him/her/it that not getting mail doesn't mean nobody tried to send 
any..... and for the usual entertaining/sarcastic/depressing comments about 
the side-effect costs of antispam tools, of course.

                        Harald

---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: 18. februar 2004 14:27 -0600
From: [email-masked]
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Re: Continuing the story - another stab at an IETF mission

Our anti-spam system is returning your email below.

Please RE-SEND your email by clicking the link to our web page Contact Form
as follows:

http://accuspam.com?kM,vbrJT

After using our Contact Form once, you will be able to send us email
directly. To permanently enable you to email us without ever using our
Contact Form again, simply ask us to add you to our permanent Approved
Senders list.

If you do not use our Contact Form to re-send your email below, then we can
NOT read it.

Note that web page Contact Forms are commonly used by professional web
sites for new contacts.

Apologies for inconvenience, as this is absolutely necessary to eliminate
huge volumes of incoming spam and increase the efficiency and accuracy with
which we can process email from you.

______________________________
Powered by http://AccuSpam.com. Signup instantly for FREE!

You may copy and paste your email below into our Contact Form above.
And you may use our Contact Form to ask us to add you to our Approved
Senders list.

Your Returned Message:

--On 18. februar 2004 18:06 +0000 Tom Petch <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> I find your definition of the Internet delightfully ambiguous.  I was
> taught that the Internet (as opposed to an internet or the internet) was
> the public network accessible through public IPv4 addresses (this predates
> IPv6) ie the Internet ceased at a firewall or other such IP level gateway.

I certainly agree on the "ambiguous", but not with the "delightful" :-)
>
> Reading your definition, I cannot tell where you stand; are firewalls and
> networks behind them included in IETF mission or not?

Here, I feel that I stand firmly on the quicksand left by those who have
gone before... if you read Dave Crocker's 1995 RFC 'To be "on" the
Internet' (RFC 1775), you will see that the problem is not a new one.

Luckily for us, "mediated access" and "messaging access" are mostly things
of the past - but in my opinion, the Internet extends to the applications
run by the people who have "client access" to the Internet.

After all, the Internet model is an end-to-end service; if the Internet
stopped at the gateway/NAT box/firewall, it would be an end-to-firewall
service for >90% of today's Internet traffic - and that doesn't make sense
to me.

So in my opinion, firewalls and the networks behind them are part of the
Internet, because we have to design for the Internet that is there, even as
we labor to make it more like the Internet we want to have.
(now, is that sufficient straddling of the NAT debate? :-)

                         Harald

---------- End Forwarded Message ----------

---

From: Richard Welty <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 16:22:11 -0500 (EST)

> reliably to respond to the message.

i have run internet mailing lists since about 1985. when the first C/R
systems showed up a few years ago, i arrived at simple conclusion
very quickly.

anybody who installs a C/R system and doesn't whitelist the mailing lists
they subscribe to doesn't deserve to receive those mailing lists.
i remove from my lists anyone who does this. nobody has complained
yet.

i'd strongly urge that the IETF adapt a similar policy. it's much less
stressful for all concerned.

richard
-- 
Richard Welty                                         [email-masked]
Averill Park Networking                                         518-573-7592
    Java, PHP, PostgreSQL, Unix, Linux, IP Network Engineering, Security

---

From: Nathaniel Borenstein <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 17:38:37 -0500

> stressful for all concerned.

This might be a satisfactory policy as an interim measure, but a better 
longer term solution would allow mailing lists to use an optional 
certification mechanism to bypass C/R systems.  (In general, C/R 
systems and certification could be very synergistic, if properly 
implemented.)  At the very least, I believe we could make it a lot 
easier for C/R systems to recognize list mail and handle it 
differently.    -- Nathaniel