Subject: RE: [Asrg] SMTP AUTH

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 23:02:12 +0000 (GMT)

>>> How many people really send mail from public places using someone else's
>>>computer?  Not many that I've seen.

>> In my travels to Europe and Russia I've discovered the internet cafes are
>HUGELY popular and everyone is sending email from public places using public
>computers.  I would say the amount of people in the world doing that is
>quite large.

> Wrong metric. There are a lot of very popular behaviors that should 
be discouraged whenever possible, NOT accommodated and lubricated. 

Ok, so now you want to CHANGE the way the WORLD uses the Internet, just to suit 
YOUR thinking on the matter?  GOOD LUCK!!!!

> A sizable fraction of mail users will open any attachment they get, so 
the approach of making the popular act slick brought us mailers that 
auto-open attachments.

Good point.  The better solution is to simply prevent such attachments from 
being delivered, if they pose a substantial risk.  That way, by the time they 
get to the user machine, they are protected against their own carelessness.

> Using the Internet from a public access Windows machine that is 
administered with an eye to keeping costs down is unsound, unsafe 
behavior. 

The *FACT* of the matter is that *most* Internet-connected machines, NOT ONLY 
JUST those at public access places, are operated and administered by people who 
are less savvy and I (and presumably you) are.  But you know what?  WE CAN'T 
CHANGE THAT!

> It might be acceptable if all of those machines were 
managed by a skilled team of professionals and/or were running 
systems designed to shield themselves and their overall user 
population from the recklessness of one user, but that's generally 
not so.

To be fair, it's getting better.  XP SP2 is much improved, and it's just about 
the first major release since Microsoft's major effort at security has started 
getting taken (very) seriously.  If you were to look at how most cruise ship 
Internet cafes are set up, they are generally in fact pretty tightly battened 
down.  I'm not sure that a Linux box set up and administered by someone equally 
clueless would be any safer (and maybe less so).

> Breaking that sort of behavior in a consistent standard way would be 
a very good thing.

Fine, but that's also vanishingly unlikely to happen.  What we need, instead, is 
some kind of SIMPLE, UNDERSTANDABLE approach that ordinary people can put in and 
administer and use every day, without great difficulty... and which protects 
them against most of these E-mail annoyances and hazards.

Gordon Peterson                  http://personal.terabites.com/
1977-2002  Twenty-fifth anniversary year of Local Area Networking!
Support free and fair US elections!  http://stickers.defend-democracy.org
12/19/98: Partisan Republicans scornfully ignore the voters they "represent".
12/09/00: the date the Republican Party took down democracy in America.

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