more on busted selling off email addresses to spammers

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 10:50:28 -0500
From: Alexandros Papadopoulos <apapadop () cmu edu>
Subject: Re: [IP] busted selling off email addresses to spammers
To: eackerma () u washington edu
Cc: dave () farber net

On Thursday 30 October 2003 09:58, Ethan Ackerman wrote:
> [[ An update on Orbitz spamming.  Never attribute to malice what can
> be explained by stupidity/hackers? ]]

"Hackers", disregarding the distorted contemporary meaning of the word,
are and will be used as an excuse for anything that the company cannot
openly admit.

"Stupidity" is obviously not an excuse for breach of contract.

Who can prove that they didn't in fact sell the addresses in a big
marketing screw-up, and then blaimed it on "evil hackers"?

Even if that was the case, their "impossible - we're using a firewall"
reply is incompetent and insulting to people's intelligence. They
obviously think that by using some sort of jargon they will silence
further complaints, by making the customer feel stupid for not
realizing that gee - they're using a firewall, which means they're
invincible!

Of course the news.com story shows that they already knew that "evil
hackers" had breached their system, in which case this whole issue is
reduced to simply lying to, intimidating or BS'ing your customers.

Business as usual.

-A

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