Submitted for your consideration.... Message-ID: Date: 20 Aug 1993 18:08:05 GMT From: Karl_Kleinpaste@charcoal.com Organization: Charcoal Communicators, Pittsburgh, PA, USA Newsgroups: alt.privacy.anon-server,alt.personals,alt.sex.movies,alt.sex.fetish.feet,alt.personals.ads,alt.sex.bondage,alt.personals.bondage,soc.bi Followup-To: alt.privacy.anon-server Subject: anonymus@charcoal.com is going away Reply-To: anonymus+admin@charcoal.com I got off the phone a while ago with someone who is responsible for mail at a large southern university. He called me because he is being pressed for action regarding anonymous mail sent through charcoal.com. It seems that there is a dweeb at this university who is sending anonymous "secret admirer" mail. Two of the five recipients of this sort of mail have raised the issue through university channels as harassment, and at least one of those is in the process of dealing with the police because it correlates uncomfortably closely with harassing phone calls and other incidents going down. This mail admin, having looked through his system's mail logs for sources of the trouble, observed that one individual has repeatedly sent mail to anonymus+clear@charcoal.com, and sometime shortly thereafter mail comes back for these recipients, on the same machine. (Yes, really. This person is sending questionable anonymous mail to people on the same system as himself. No joke, though I wish it was. It's a Big Bluish Beastie.) So while I was unwilling to identify the originator of the mail myself, the admin identified him for me by login name, and he was (no surprise) correct. The individual in question is going to get at least a stern talking-to by Those Who Matter. It is hoped that the police can be kept at bay, and that more of that university's channels will not be exercised in this process. This comes on the heels of my having had to chase down incidents in the last week or two... ...someone sending half-Mbyte uuencoded core files via anonymus+clear ...having had to extinguish a couple of individuals due to, e.g., repetitious reposting, and personals posted outside alt.personals* ...another report of anonymous harassment whose details I do not feel I am at liberty to disclose at all. anonymus@charcoal.com is going away. My heart is no longer in it, because I am unwilling to ride herd on this ridiculous minority of totally cluefree individuals who seem to believe that they are somehow superior to the rest of the universe and can do things that are clearly against the requirements I stipulate in the info sheet. The potential for repercussions against myself as admin is far too high when I am informed that police are already involved -- I was much too close to such a situation 10 months ago. This server will cease operation on 31 Aug. It is my belief that other anon servers operate in all of the groups currently supported here. Users have 10 days to make other arrangements. More and more, I am convinced that life as a hermit is preferable to life on the network. It is amazing how far one's attitude will fall following one phone call. Please respect Followup-To:. Feel free (feel encouraged) to disseminate this notice wherever appropriate. This note is being posted to alt.privacy.anon-server and those groups which have received 50+ postings in the life of the current news transfer log, less alt.sexual.abuse.recovery (which happens to be far and away in the #1 slot of such a list). --