From: John Stanley (stanley@peak.org)
Date: Fri Mar 16 2001 - 18:05:50 CST
John Stanley <stanley@peak.org> writes:
>But that brings up an interesting point. Who is going to get the blame
>when someone uses the .invalid flag to mark an address as invalid, and the
>spammers start using the "remove the .invalid flag" trick?
Charles Lindsey (chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk):
>I think the answer to that is that spammers are unlikely to use that
>technique,
This problem is broader than spammers.
Suppose I decide I really don't like, well, since he's been the recent
example, Kent. I start posting as "kent@landfield.com.invalid". I've
been explicit, according to this draft, in saying that I am not authorized
to use the kent@landfield.com mailbox; i.e., I am not claiming in any way
to BE Kent. In fact, by saying that I don't have rights to the address, I
am saying that I am NOT him, because he does have the rights.
I go to all the support groups and start talking about the things I need
support for. Now, that would be a lie, but any ISP that enforces a "no
lies" policy will be out of business tomorrow. I need support for AIDS,
fat, transvestitism, you name it. Anything that has a negative
connotation.
Kent gets lots of sympathetic mail but doesn't know why. He decides to
look for a new job, and his prospects do a Deja/Google/Something search
for him. Boy, look at all the articles that contain (a subset of) his
address and talk about his personal problems. These people don't deal with
news, they certainly haven't heard that .invalid is a flag that says I
don't have the rights to the address appearing in the rest of the string.
They may have heard that this is how one modifies his address to prevent
spam. Kent doesn't look like a good risk to hire today.
What does Kent do? I'm not telling lies about him. I have no reason to
believe that these people would think I am him, the standard for the
messages I am posting says that I am making the claim that I am NOT him.
That's a pretty big kettle of worms for this standard to open up.