Keith,
Normally I can see your point of view, but not in this case. I find your
response containing a gaping hole in logic. Allowing someone to know what
City or State an email came from does NOTHING to give away a persons actual
location only the location of the machine that sent it.
And if a person is worried about being stalked they should contact the
police. If they are afraid that email is going to be giving the location
away they should not be sending email.
Lets be realistic here. Using your logic the peson should not use a phone
either because I stalker may have caller ID. Getting back to reality and the
problem at hand:
To the point IMO there needs to be a way to determine where mail came from,
a physical location. When I first became active in the IETF I worked at a
college, since then I have worn many hats, as the owner of an ISP, I can see
the need for this type of information.
First of all this could be used to filter email, second, to determine
juristication of law, third allow an ISP decide what action it would /
should take against the SPAMMER or the ISP that is allowing the SPAM to
flood into his mail server or network.
The only thing that completely anonymous email does is cause people to send
volumes of SPAM and waste millions and millions of dollars in credit card
fraud. We receive thousands of dollars worth of orders from people using
stolen credit cards with anonyous email accounts that cause chargebacks all
the time.
Because of all this fraud, most of our customers have to make hard choices,
such as, ignore orders from Yahoo! and HotMail accounts or accept the
possibility that these orders will result in charge backs.
Credit card owners want to report the card the lost and want to prosecute
the theif but frankly views like yours are going to stifle the abilty to
bring thiefs to justice.
I am sure it is not your intention to help people commit credit card fraud
or send SPAM but realistically there needs to be some type of responsibility
in email assigned to email accounts and thier ISPs and I think it is high
time that this is done.
I do not mean to offend you in any way but on this topic I think you are
totally wrong and hope you re-consider your thoughts on this subject. Can
tell you have a strong view on this subject, but I would like your help in a
solution and not just say this will be done "over my dead body". Statements
such as this are not constructive and your argument has no merit.
The physical location of the machine sending the email is an important thing
to know to fight SPAM and fighting credit card fraud.
By not considering this, I do not think you are helping solve a serious
problem that I see existing RIGHT NOW and getting worse every day.
Creating the GL RR and using this in mail software will be a first step in
solving a serious problem.
With Regards,
Al Costanzo
----- Original Message -----
From: "Keith Moore" <moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu>
To: "Al Costanzo" <al(_at_)akc(_dot_)com>
Cc: "Keith Moore" <moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu>;
<ietf-822(_at_)imc(_dot_)org>
Sent: Monday, January 19, 2004 12:49 PM
Subject: Re: making mail traceable
I agree with you on this 100%.
The exact location may be a disaster to publish but precision of the RR
record is configurable.
You could just list the Country or Country & State or Country & State &
City.
you've obviously never known someone well who was stalked by her
nutcase ex-husband.
Keith