On 2005-12-08 11:45:21 -0600, gep2 at terabites.com wrote: > This is INDEED a matter of concern... when disreputable folks start signing > _our_ names to E-mails to politicians and others (who knows, letters to the > editors, and so forth) in hopes of making it look like WE support THEIR > causes...!!!! > > One has to wonder how many such letters get sent in our names which we don't > know anything about...!! If you ignore the specifics, that is something that virus/worm writers have done for quite some time: Take both the recipient and the fake sender from the same addressbook in the hope that the recipient will know and trust the fake sender. > I don't recall seeing this specific concern discussed here before (mostly just > the nuisance/cost issue about spam) but what happens when abusers use these > kinds of approaches to influence the direction of governmental lawmaking!!?? I don't think this is specific to spam, but the general problem of proving identity has been discussed in connection with reputation systems a few times on this list. > Even if legislators learn to ignore unverifiable stuff like this, then how do > legitimate citizens contact their legislators about issues that we really DO > care passionately about? For the citizens: Sign your messages. Use PGP or S/MIME. Both have been around for about a decade. For the politicians: Treat all unsigned messages as anonymous letters. Learn to use PGP or S/MIME to verify signed messages (or get your staff to do it). For the authors of e-mail software: Make it easier to sign messages and verify signatures, so that more people do it. hp -- _ | Peter J. Holzer | Ich sehe nun ein, dass Computer wenig |_|_) | Sysadmin WSR | geeignet sind, um sich was zu merken. | | | hjp at hjp.at | __/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | -- Holger Lembke in dan-am
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