On Dec 10, 2003, at 6:20 PM, Bill Stewart wrote:
On 10 Dec 2003 at 15:19, Nostradumbass@SAFe-mail.net wrote:
E-gold and other DGCs do not do much if any due diligence in checking account holder identification
Unfortunately, they also don't due much if any due diligence in identifying themselves in messages to real or potential customers, so it's extremely difficult to determine if I've gotten any administrative messages that really _were_ from them as opposed to the N fraudsters sending out mail asking you to log in to e-g0ld.com or whatever fake page lets them steal your egold account number and password so they can drain your balance.
A policy of PGP-signing all their messages using a key that's published on their web pages would be a good start, though it's still possible to trick some fraction of people into accepting the wrong keys. For now, my basic assumption is that any communications I receive that purport to be from them are a fraud, and it's frustrating that there's no good mechanism for reporting that to e-gold.
I receive several messages a month saying I need to re-verify information with an E-gold account (which I never recall establishing, by the way). If I ever determine that E-Gold personnel have faked an account on my behalf, or are complicit in any way with stealing from me, I will of course think that killing their children, their parents, and them is moral. E-gold was never even slightly interesting to me for reasons I talked about a few years ago--the notion that a bar of gold moving between shelves in someone's hotel room in Barbados or Guyana or wherever is equivalent to untraceability is silly Randroid idol-worship raised to the fourth power. The scandals reported--and not meaniingfully rebutted--several years ago confirm to me the whole thing is some Randroid fantasy built on sand. --Tim May --Tim May "Ben Franklin warned us that those who would trade liberty for a little bit of temporary security deserve neither. This is the path we are now racing down, with American flags fluttering."-- Tim May, on events following 9/11/2001