That frood Casioqv sassed:
Dude! [In the voice of John Cusack] You MUST paragraph! Now!
[hopefully at least some people will get this reference...]
> else. This is a totally anonymous questionnaire. I however do now
> have sufficient information for my research and do not need any more
> responses.
Well good. My intention was never to prevent any legitimate research
from happening.
> If this were to be a problem I would go to the trouble to write a
> cgi script to store responses anonymously. The reason that I had not
> done this was because no one requested it
I think you're still missing the point. At least several of the
people on this list INITIALLY thought your e-mail was spam, and even
worse a request for more info that could allow you to spam us more
effectively. Once you replied personally, that was clearly dispelled
in the minds of most of us. The subsequent discussion was largely
aimed at helping you avoid this problem in the future (though perhaps
it was not conducted very well, I don't know, and I appologize if that
was the case).
I did not intend to insult you, and I'm sorry if you feel that I have.
The reason no one requested a URL is that those of us who thought your
e-mail was possibly spam DIDN'T RESPOND AT ALL. Because that's one of
the key ways you discourage spam.
> and I received sufficient responses without going to the trouble. If
> you would still like to participate in my research anonymously I can
> create a free e-mail account under my name from a service like yahoo
> mail and you can send me the information that way.
Well, since you're done there's really no point, and quite honestly I
don't even give out the type of information that you requested to the
Census people, never mind college students, anonymous or not. I just
think it's nobody's business but mine, and I'm FAR from alone there.
> As I said, I have no desire to obtain any contact information from
> you as this is totally irrelevant to my research. If my responses to
> your accusations and the fact that I offered multiple solutions as
> to how you could respond anonymously have not convinced you that I
> am genuine than I have no further desire to convince you.
I've already said I believe you, and I never made any accusations of
any kind. I was simply alerting the other list people that your
e-mail LOOKED like it MIGHT be spam. It absolutely did, despite the
fact that it wasn't. Others have backed me up on this. If you've
spent ANY time on combatting spam, you already know this, and
shouldn't require convincing from any of us. I even specifically
said, "This might be legit, I don't know..."
> If I wanted to spam you it would be much more efficient to just take
> your e-mail address as I already have it.
Actually it wouldn't. The most efficient means of spamming people is
to have a robot generate an e-mail to a variety of user group mailing
lists, usenet news groups, and other existing direct market lists,
requesting information back from someone, and then spam everyone who
replies. The process is completely automated. Which, by all
appearances, was quite POSSIBLY what you did, until you arrived to nix
the whole idea.
What you're describing is essentially hand-collecting e-mail
addresses, which is extremely inefficient. What I just described is a
tecnique used very commonly by real spammers (though of course there
are others).
> By allowing yourself to be so consumed by this fear of getting junk
> e-mail you are truly allowing them to control your life and bother
> you. By not worrying about it and just using filtering software or
> deleting it when you get it (as I do) you are doing yourself a great
> favor.
I'm hardly "consumed by fear" of being spammed. Spam is but an
annoyance, but I don't like being annoyed, and I already spend FAR too
much time on it (spam). Filtering software is only so good, without
risking losing legitimate messages as well. One way or the other,
I've got to go through a lot of it by hand. It's time consuming, and
I have MUCH better ways to spend my time.
It's really that simple.
> As I always say "There is nothing worse that can happen to you than
> paranoia."
And as I always say, anyone who isn't paranoid has never worked in
security or law enforcement. Virtually everyone is at least a little
bit paranoid about some things (though most people would choose to
call it "concerned" rather than "paranoid"). By and large the only
ones who aren't are naive innocents. There's lots in this world to be
paranoid about, rather legitimately. We all have computerized records
of a variety of types, including taxpayer info, medical records,
credit card records and other financial records, driving records, etc.
ALL of this information can easily been stolen electronically and used
for all sorts of unpleasant purposes, ranging from the relatively
benign privacy invasion, to the rather unhappy credit card fraud, to
the extremely unpleasant identity theft.
Now, if you want to participate in society as we know it, while there
ARE things you can do to help safeguard yourself against these sorts
of things, there also admittedly ARE limits. And though this sort of
thing happens to SOMEONE on a daily basis, clearly the odds of this
happening to YOU are reletively low. So maybe it's not worth it to
YOU to be concerned about this sort of thing. And maybe you don't get
enough spam for YOU to worry about it. But I'll thank you to let me
make that decision for myself, and to allow me to alert my friends
when I think I spot it in action.
--
We sometimes catch a window, a glimpse of what's beyond
Was it just imagination stringing us along?
---------------------------------------------------
Derek Martin | Unix/Linux geek
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | GnuPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D
Retrieve my public key at http://pgp.mit.edu
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