On Thu, 13 Mar 2003, Gre7g Luterman wrote:

> On Thu, 13 Mar 2003 12:04:28 -0700, "Jason R. Mastaler"
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > You might say, "make this feature optional then if you don't like
> > it". No, because as this thread demonstrates, users are not always
> > aware of the potential consequences of something like this. IMO, it
> > offers marginal (if any) benefit, and will only serve to incite
> > further animosity towards TMDA.
>
> I'm not going to advocate this idea, but I do see one potential
> benefit to the suggestion that I feel compelled to mention...
>
> There's a lot of brain-dead users, novices, newbies, grandparents, and
> the like out there that just don't read.  I wish it weren't the case,
> but it is.  A ton of people who get an e-mail reply immediately after
> they send a letter just figure it is a bounce message.  They shrug,
> delete it, and go on with their life.  Or so it seems.
>
> This sort of thing would really piss me off, but I do take a little
> secret joy in knowing that TMDA accidentally shields me from having to
> read mail from anyone this stupid.
>
> *IF* we made it so that TMDA could send out reminders, these people
> *MIGHT* actually perk up out of their walking comas and realize that
> some interaction from them is required before the message they sent
> could be received...
>
> Please note that I do not have any statistical information on how many
> "real" people fail to authenticate.  I have had at least two people
> send me ICQ messages about the "bounce" message they received when
> sending me e-mail.
>
> Gre7g.

I gave my parents (both in their 70s) TMDA protected @openvistas.net
addresses because they were both getting upwards of 50 spams a day
through their ISP addresses.

Together, we wrote an e-mail that explained in real basic terms what the
problem was (10x more spam than good e-mail) and what solution we were
implementing (TMDA), what to expect when the recipient sent an e-mail
to either my Mom or Dad and that the confirmation would HAVE to be
answered PERIOD before e-mail would be delivered.  No exceptions.

I didn't set up a pre-populated whitelist for my parents because I wanted
to spread the word about TMDA and I was curious what the reaction would be
amongst friends in their age group.  Since I am monitoring the system
daily, I knew they would never lose any e-mail because if I saw a message
for either of them hang in the pending queue, I could take the appropriate
steps to handle it.

That was 4 months ago.  My Dad had to send a reminder message to one of
his friends that hadn't responded to the confirmation messsage.  The
second reminder prompted his friend to confirm, and we were good to go.

In fact, the biggest problem I've had as a SysAdmin in this situation is
when my parents give their new address out to sources like mailing lists
where there is no human involved to reply to the confirmation message.
When I see that crop up in the system logs, I just ask if they really want
this message from X, and if they do, I add the address to their whitelist
and manually release it from the pending queue.  I'm more than willing to
do this with my parents, but I would not want to do it on a daily basis
for a gob of customers!

Yes, I know I could have them use one of the specially formatted TMDA
addresses to handle this problem, but I'm holding out for the web based
interface to TMDA that Gre7g is building.  When my clients, my parents or
not, can access their pending queue from a web browser, and they can
whitelist/blacklist/drop/accept an e-mail, I'll think we have arrived at
the Promised Land.

Thanks for reading along,

Jeff

 --
Jeff Ross
Open Vistas Networking, Inc.
http://www.openvistas.net

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