On 2005-12-08 11:45:21 -0600, gep2(_at_)terabites(_dot_)com wrote:
This is INDEED a matter of concern... when disreputable folks start signing
_our_ names to E-mails to politicians and others (who knows, letters to the
editors, and so forth) in hopes of making it look like WE support THEIR
causes...!!!!
One has to wonder how many such letters get sent in our names which we don't
know anything about...!!
If you ignore the specifics, that is something that virus/worm writers
have done for quite some time: Take both the recipient and the fake
sender from the same addressbook in the hope that the recipient will
know and trust the fake sender.
I don't recall seeing this specific concern discussed here before (mostly
just
the nuisance/cost issue about spam) but what happens when abusers use these
kinds of approaches to influence the direction of governmental lawmaking!!??
I don't think this is specific to spam, but the general problem of
proving identity has been discussed in connection with reputation
systems a few times on this list.
Even if legislators learn to ignore unverifiable stuff like this, then how do
legitimate citizens contact their legislators about issues that we really DO
care passionately about?
For the citizens: Sign your messages. Use PGP or S/MIME. Both have been
around for about a decade.
For the politicians: Treat all unsigned messages as anonymous letters.
Learn to use PGP or S/MIME to verify signed messages (or get your staff
to do it).
For the authors of e-mail software: Make it easier to sign messages and
verify signatures, so that more people do it.
hp
--
_ | Peter J. Holzer | Ich sehe nun ein, dass Computer wenig
|_|_) | Sysadmin WSR | geeignet sind, um sich was zu merken.
| | | hjp(_at_)hjp(_dot_)at |
__/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | -- Holger Lembke in dan-am
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