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Subject: Re: Addition to my "philosophy"/about free e-mail accounts

Author: Paul Richards

Date: 10:10:58 06/07/99

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On June 07, 1999 at 11:36:42, Will Singleton wrote:

>On June 07, 1999 at 10:51:06, Shep wrote:
>
>>
>>I'm not so much into people hiding their identity either, but
>>I don't see so many cases of abuse on CCC that this kind of action seems
>>necessary, especially considering the work involved.
>>
>
>Shep,
>
>I appreciate your comments, and your participation here.  Checking IDs and
>restricting free emails would require some work on the part of ICD, maybe quite
>a lot.  But consider the work that the moderators have to do to deal with the
>existing problem.
>
>You don't see most of the junk we have to dump.  The people who cause problems
>here do so repeatedly, and make the moderators job very difficult.  We can't
>tell the legitimate posters from the garbage men.  It leads to a kind of siege
>state, the moderators trying to hold back the looney fringe.  And good people
>leave, since they are subject to attack, and the board becomes littered with
>inconsequence.

Which is why worrying about anonymous posting without worrying about
anonymous reading makes no sense.  You want to keep the jackoffs out
at the gate, not let them in and then clean up their poop before anyone
sees it. :)  Practically it's very difficult.  Apart from the vast
numbers of free email domains, my experience on usenet is that the
#1 haven for trolls is your home turf, AOL.  Unlike most free email
setups which tend to add traceable header information, AOL gives no
clues whatsoever.  Look at your address, "smocfi@aol.com".  If you look
on usenet the author name is SMO CFI. Should I send you to the dictionary
to look up the word anonymous? ;) Now it happens that people here already
know you, but that won't be true for everyone.  AOL also allows you,
what, ten screen names per account?  Please.  Not only that but I can
get the one-month-free disks anywhere, sign on to AOL and wreak all sorts
of havoc, then trade to another account a month later.  I see it all
the time.  My gut feeling is to get frustrated and wish that AOL was
banned from the net.  But then all the normal AOL people would suffer.
So why doesn't AOL force people to put their real names?  It would be
nice to reduce abuse coming from AOL.  I suspect it's the same reason why
we don't require all ISPs to attach the user's SSN to every piece of online
communication.  Because proving your identity isn't worth giving the
whole world your personal information, because it can and will be
abused.  Funny that Europe has greater safeguards for online privacy,
but it is Mr. Faber from Germany suggesting that we stamp everyone with
an ID. ;)  Imagine the fun Rolf could have with his endless fascist
prattle. ;)

Perhaps there is a way to automate some of the moderation to make it
less of a burden.




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