Re: message police -- MIDRANGE-L

From Al Macintyre

It seems to me that these ISPs are trying to provide a service that they need 
to provide but they are a bit brain dead in their technical department.  That 
is to say that what they NEED is software comparable to what Norton 
Anti-V*i*r*u*s or McAffee offer, to catch the real problems, not catch 
traffic that contains particular words.  However, it is possible that some 
ISPs do not even HAVE a technical department & are buying software like some 
parents get Nanny stuff, in which quality is whatever vapor ware the software 
marketers can convince them is there.

I also had a case of a bounce where I was describing a number of software 
techniques & I said one of them was a b"i"t"c"h to implement & I meant this 
in the sense that it was extremely non-trivial.  Now I recognize that word 
can also be used by dog fanciers to distinguish from male dogs, but what I 
got was a bounce by message police saying that my e-mail could be in 
violation of sexual harrassment & yes that word can be used in that manner, 
but that was not the manner in which I was using it.

So what we have here is new software from well meaning individuals whose 
effort is falling way short of what is needed & it will be a big nuisance for 
a few years, before the market demand is met by something that really works.

Did you adjust your spell checker so you write normally, then it suggests the 
substitute words when you are done?

Alister William Macintyre 

> From: jhertvik@midrangecomputing.com (Joe Hertvik)
>  
>  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)?

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