Mini-mailbombs and Warning Letters

[Timothy C. May]

(This is not about MIME, but the astute reader will see some parallels...)

I've received a couple of "automatically generated" pieces of e-amil which
tell me that, in the generator's opinion, something is wrong with my public
key, or it could not be found at the keyserver preferred by the owner of
the mail generator, etc.

Quoting from the latest: (identity of generator owner witheld)

"P.S.  This mail was composed by my mailreading sftwr, which
automatically scans incoming mail, looking for failed keyserver
requests, and prompts me whether it should automatically send this msg
on my behalf.  If there is a bug w this sftwr (for example, you never
PGP sign your msgs, so this entire msg makes no sense), or if you're
interested in the software itself (mail-secure.el: a package in lisp
for emacs; this is just one of the many crypto/privacy related things
it does) please mail the author of this package ( tjic at openmarket.com )
for details."

As the saying goes, "Sigh."

Being on a list with 700 subscribers, some of whom are running increasingly
sophisticated automatic checking agents, I foresee an increase in these
"warning letters" from their checking agents who feel posts are not
adequate in some way.

A minor issue, but symptomatic of trends.

I'm dealing with it the same way I'm dealing with the few people who have
something in their MIME setup that triggers my mailer (Eudora Pro 2.1) to
treat their text as attachments. Namely, by filtering them out.

--Tim May

---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay at got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
Corralitos, CA              | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^756839      | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."