On 19 Jan 2018, at 20:02 (-0500), jdow wrote:
After your first time being a victim of cyberstalking you'll soon enough wish your "from" line was as generic as mine. People who put their full name in the From: line haven't been mugged yet. I spent a year learning about this 1985-1986.
I think that's variable. I had issues 95-97 with both a herd of Usenet kooks and the Church of Scientology (for my small role in defending a.r.s) that included in-person confrontations but I didn't then drop nor have I since dropped the use of my real name online, (with a partial exception during my divorce when I reverted to my birth surname before it was official) despite an attenuated but never really dead trickle of net-originated hostility for 20+ years. I think one's individual vulnerabilities make a huge difference, as there are threats that would literally be laughable to me which would be legitimately and justifiably terrifying to others. The worst I got was 2 visits from CPS in response to anonymous 'tips' of child abuse and a threat of a beating from a man who actually showed up at my door but didn't stay long enough for any substantive interaction after he made a snap judgement of his prospects...
OTOH, if I were a woman or looked less like a biker-bar bouncer or had a history I'd rather not have widely known, I'd almost surely evaluate my risk differently. This is a hard problem that no one has yet solved.
As a byproduct of this habit of mine, when I see a "To: John" or other name than mine it's automatically spam, especially when it cannot even get the gender right.
That can be useful even without a nym in the From header, although it is helpful to have a tricky name. e.g. no one has ever called me "Willy" except for a few spammers.
-- Bill Cole b...@scconsult.com or billc...@apache.org (AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses) Currently Seeking Steady Work: https://linkedin.com/in/billcole
