Re: message police

["Joe Hertvik" <jhertvik@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Subject: Re: Message police

You wrote:
>I've encountered this too ... a political correctness
scanner rejects a
>message because it contains a word it considers too
"Harsh".

I know exactly what you mean. I send out a weekly email
to a group of subscribers and every time I talk about
v*i*r*u*s*e*s or security, I inevitably get a number of
bounced emails from Internet service providers who are
scanning email for certain words that I am using in my
stories. If I talk about a v*i*r*u*s attack that
happened or some common h*a*c*k*i*n*g technique, these
providers don't even let my email into the system and
so, if the reader doesn't see my email in their email
box some weeks, it's because it was denied access to
the system because an email provider incorrectly
perceived it as a threat. So what started out as a good
idea--scanning emails for v*i*r*u*s* indicators--has
turned into a form of idiot-machine censorship because
the automatic scanning programs can't distinguish
between an actual v*i*r*u*s and someone who is only
talking about the situation and offering up some
pointers or references.

Sigh...

To get around this, I'm experimenting with coding
certain "hot-words" with '*'s to get past the idiot
sentries. That's why you're seeing all those '*' in
this email and--in my case--people will continue to see
them whenever I talk about this subject. It's the only
way I can get around the censors (it's kind of like a
secret handshake for the Internet).

If this works, you should see this email. If it doesn't
work, well you'll never know I sent it.

Sheesh...Whatever happened to free and open speech (or
email in this case)?


Joe Hertvik
AS/400 Network Expert Editor
mailto:jhertvik@midrangecomputing.com
http://www.midrangecomputing.com/ane
http://www.midrangecomputing.com/mnealert/subscribe.cfm
(for a **free** Midrange Network Expert Alert email
newsletter subscription)

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