Unfortunately, in the wild world of internet email, there are individuals whose job is to attract as many "lowest common denominator" folks to view generally poor quality smut. It's also unfortunate that, if you have an email address -- regardless of who (organization, institution or individual) or where you are -- this junk mail is bound to find its way into your emailbox. Even more unfortunate is the fact that the individual(s) who sends this tripe is usually able to disguise his or her identity (vis-a-vis email address) with the aid of specially written programs. It's a lot like the crap that one gets in the US Mail, except that the US Mail has strict rules about what kind of junkmail can be sent and which cannot be sent through the US Mails. Because the sender is typically unidentified in the string of headers preceding the email message, sending angry replies to who you think is the sender usually gets you a message from some mail daemon saying that no such person exists. Gee, I wonder why. Right now, the only way to control the content of what comes into your emailbox is by using mail filters. I use mail filters to sort email into specific folders (I use Communicator at home and PINE at work) as it's downloaded onto my harddrive. I've occasionally gotten some of this junk -- the result of some latenight meandering that inadvertently left me staring at some indelicate body part. I can usually tell how/why I got a certain piece of email, basing its arrival on the proximity of when I might have wandered into what my wife refers to as "No-No Land." The other way to control what's in your emailbox -- please don't flame me -- is to use your delete key liberally. (I may very well have gotten the offensive email that stirred things up, but routinely deleted it without a thought.) The "activist" thing to do is to figure out who the system administrator is at the domain name on the email address and send that person a copy of the offensive email *complete with full headers*. This alerts the owner/administrator of that domain to the likelihood of future (usually unapproved) uses of their domain name. Companies like Juno and Yahoo! specifically prohibit spamming, but that doesn't stop outsiders from using their domain names. However, Juno has successfully found and sued several individuals who weren't smart enough for Juno's sleuths. The folks at Juno appreciate being alerted to violations of their spam ban. The person to complain to at Juno is <postmaster@juno.com>. The more complaints they receive, the more time they may spend trying to track down the perpetrators. Although there's really no way (now) to stop this crud from wafting into your emailbox, at least we can take a proactive approach and alert officials to the problem. Let them try to stop it. In the meanwhile, I think it's safe to say that nobody in PTG would deign to send this stuff to the lists. I think the general intelligence of this organization is considerably higher than the "lowest common denominator" crowd. Happy PTGing! Ron Torrella, RPT Ethics Committee, Chair
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