From: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 1998 13:37:49 +0800
To: security@aol.com
Subject: Re: Netscape AOL Instant Messenger Confirmation (kB3bEjeb1I aohelsux)
Message-ID: <199811250510.GAA13692@replay.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



>Again, some clueless asshole that can't tell the difference between
>solicited responses and Unsolicited spam mouths off.  If you would like
>to talk about someone, talk about the jerk who set up an AIM name using
>the outdated address, not the company that repsonded.
>
>PHM
>
>AKA PHMerrill@AOL.Com (among other names and addresses)

Again, the clueless asshole known as Paul *H.* Merrill jumps up and defends
AOL, incompetently-written web sites, and morons everywhere.

Someone told AOL to mail cypherpunks@toad.com. AOL could have checked to see
if the originating site was under the toad.com domain. This is trivial. They
didn't. It's rather easy to just require that somebody trying to mail an
address under the toad.com domain submit the request from an address under
toad.com. 

In other words, Paul, you believe that if somebody goes and types your
address into some system and asks it to send you 512MB of MPEG video, that's
okay because it was solicited. It wasn't solicited by you but somebody
solicited it.

Oops. That's "blatent propoganda." I'd better rephrase. In other words,
Paul, you believe that if somebody goes and types YOUR address into fifty
different systems, signs you up for a bunch of mailing lists, and generally
causes you a lot of inconvenience, that's okay because it was solicited. You
don't know who it was solicited by, but somebody obviously did. If you then
object to the sites sending you mail rather than just silently
unsubscribing yourself every week, are you then just 'some clueless asshole'?

Are spammers now not to be held accountable for their spamming because they
bought a list of addresses from someone who claimed that the people all
asked to be on the mailing list?

Why don't we just sign Cypherpunks up for Ignition-Point, the FP list, the 
ACLU action advisories, Sixdegrees, and whatever else we can find? Or should
We just sign up Paul, really, because he doesn't have a problem with this. 
In fact I'm sure we could make some 'marketting research' to show that he 
might be interested. Hey let's get the entire CDR subscription list and
sign everybody up for FP and ACLU because if you're on Cypherpunks you're
obviously interested in those things.

The root of the problem is sites which require email addresses for no good
reason, and/or don't have the decency to perform a simple check to see if
the domains match. They're lazy. They're irresponsible. When confronted, no
matter how civil, they react much like you do, Paul, and they don't want to
be inconvenienced by having to fix their usually badly-designed web sites.

If I recall correctly Tim has the same opinion and has stated it a few
times as have others so I'm not alone.

Now I leave you, Paul, so you can go back to your 24 hour vigil and you and
your quick response team can scour the net for attacks against AOL and the
true clueless assholes, and defend them with your last breath.

Yet Another 'Clueless Asshole'