Fun_People Archive
23 Oct
And it reaches new lows...

Date: Mon, 23 Oct 95 17:17:45 -0700
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: And it reaches new lows...

[Fortunately, this kind of thing never happens to Fun_People...
 ...  -psl]

Forwarded-by: bostic@bsdi.com (Keith Bostic)
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)

So I just get a "spam" complaint from an AOL postmaster threatening:

>From: Postmaster@aol.com
>To: netadmin@world.std.com, postmaster@world.std.com
>Subject: Fwd: cc:Mail UUCPLINK 2.0 Undeliverable Message
>Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 16:49:01 -0400

> Repeated offenses of this nature will result in AOL taking action to
> prevent further problems.

etc.

I look down at the message in question (they enclosed it) and it's just
a few mail bounces through a mailing list out of World to some customer
(look at the subject line above, some kind of cc:Mail lossage and
unfortunately cc:Mail bounces back to the From: address and ignores stuff
like Errors-To: and Replies-To:, constant nuisance), a list which their
customer is explicitly subscribed to and apparently has been subscribed
to for a while.

I guess the customer didn't like the bounce message, and I guess the AOL
postmaster has decided that bounce messages are "unsolicited mail". The
message from the postmaster also made the point that their customers have
to pay for all their email so this is a problem (well, THEN *YOU* EDIT
THEIR MAIL -- YOU'RE GETTING THE GODDAMNED MONEY NOT ME!)

This is why we also have to be careful with this anti-spam crap, there
are people out there, some of whom work as postmasters for the largest
online services on the planet, who, are, well...you get my point, can't
quite fog a mirror I guess is the expression.

I took the guy off the list and told the postmaster to tell him and tell
him that it's ok if he re-subscribes as far as I'm concerned but perhaps
that will remind him that HE SUBSCRIBED.

Morons. I may just mass unsub all AOL addresses from all lists here. I
mean, this is their postmaster threatening, not some random.

	-b

© 1995 Peter Langston