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Subject: Email Fraud

Author: KarinsDad

Date: 12:00:04 01/22/99

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On January 22, 1999 at 14:45:39, Dann Corbit wrote:

>On January 22, 1999 at 08:08:07, Steffen Jakob wrote:
>
>>On January 22, 1999 at 02:15:59, Bruce Moreland wrote:
>>
>>>On January 21, 1999 at 15:16:37, Dann Corbit wrote:
>>
>>[...]
>>
>>>Fake email address in what sense?  You can't get a password without having a
>>>real email address, since the password is sent to the email address.
>>
>>I think Dan meant those Email accounts which you can get free from several
>>public services (e.g. gmx, bigfoot, ...).
>That is one issue.  It would not be a problem if the services were not abused to
>allow hanky-panky.  But they are sometimes.  Another is that people can get an
>account, then delete the email account used to get access and continue to post.
>I have had emails bounce before, trying to send an email to the originator of a
>message.

This problem is easier to resolve though.

Once a month or so, have CCC send an Email to everyone. If an Email bounces, try
it again a day later or so and if it still bounces, disable the account. You
could even do this at random times so that people wouldn't know that it occurs
at the end of the month, to get new Email and CCC accounts at the beginning of
the month. If anyone accidentally got caught with a problem such as their ISP
was down for a few days and couldn't get back in, they could always Email CCC
that they cannot get back in and why their Email was disabled. I think the
frequency of problems of this type is low enough that the solution would be
fine.

Some ISPs give out free accounts for 30 days or so, so you couldn't eliminate
the problem completely. You could only attempt to minimize it.

This solution could also be used to eventually clean up the server of obsolete
accounts.

You could also state right up front that the free Email accounts that are abused
will invalidate that service for everyone (such as if someone uses hotmail.com
to cause problems, all free hotmail.com accounts are busted). This may prevent a
few non-paying Email contributors from getting access here, but for those of us
who do pay an ISP (which is probably a high percentage), it would minimize these
types of abuse problems here (such as Sean's 91+ accounts).

Do these solutions seem reasonable?

KarinsDad



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