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Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 15:14:14 -0800
To: declan_at_well.com
From: Mike Masnick <mike_at_techdirt.com>
Subject: another anti-spam dictator
Hi Declan,
Following your emails about bad anti-spam policies, I thought you might be
interested in this story as well. It's about Barry Shein, president of The
World (one of the oldest "public" ISPs around), going somewhat ballistic
when approached by a customer/friend asking about messages to him that were
falsely being bounced as spam.
http://www.internetwk.com/story/INW20021219S0003
My own thoughts on it were posted here:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20021219/151210_F.shtml
Clearly, spam is a problem for ISPs (moreso, even than for end-users), but
his response seems to go a bit too far - especially when he's being asked
by a customer about a specific, identifiable case of a false positive. His
response is:
"The one thing I won't do is spend a remaining minute of our time talking
about false positives. If we all go down in blazes, I don't care any more."
He also has a theory that spam is really a cyberterrorist denial of service
attack.
Nice to see anti-spam folks taking a reasonable approach to all this,
yes? It's going to increasingly become an issue for end-users in choosing
who their ISP is. Clearly, some spam filters are helpful, but there needs
to be some flexibility involved. Self-declared, anti-spam dictators are
causing almost as many problems as they think they're solving.
Mike
http://www.techdirt.com/
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Received on Dec 22 2002
Intro
