From: "John D. Hardin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On Fri, 20 Jul 2007, Robot Terror wrote:
Why is it my responsibility as a holder of a valid email address
to accept mail from anyone who wants to send me the mail?
Who ever said *that*?
Anyone who holds to the snail mail analogy certainly would.
At the very least any email recipient has the responsibility to
handle incoming messages as they see fit WITHOUT bothering other
people with their decisions.
If you decide my address is not good and elect to simply drop emails
from me on the floor or issue a permanent error as the initial mail
exchange takes place, that's fine. But if you challenge me, that
violates the "without bothering other people with their decisions."
With snail mail it is nigh on to impossible to interrupt the reception
process and reject a piece of mail. I simply place it into the trash
on my way into the house. (Some things, like unwanted subscription
offers or credit card offers, I tear in half. One half goes out this
week in recylecables and the other goes out next week in the cat poop.)
That is to say I make the decision myself as a multitasking project as
I walk the 250' from the mailbox to the house. No particular loss to
me there. If I wanted to perform a snail mail challenge/response it
would cost me time, money (bandwidth waste on the Internet), and bother
the sender. To do it right I'd have to waste the same time it'd take
to figure out it is junk as to figure out I need to challenge. So I do
not bother. And if the mail has a forged return address I'd bother
somebody innocent if I sent a cat poop to the return address.
I treat email the same way. *I* decide what I want to see. I do not
delegate this to some third party, even the purported sender. For
snail mail my brain is performing the SpamAssassin duties reasonably
quickly. The volume of spam snail mail is light; and, it is usually
VERY easy to distinguish. (If it isn't in an envelope or have postage
on it the destination is the trashbin. That covers the loose collections
of trash with separate address cards, for example. And I do keep musing
about sending it all back to PennySaver with an enclosed cat poop, too.
But it's less work to simply drop it in the trash on the way in the
door.)
I've been tempted more than once to respond to somebody's challenge
and then forward a week's worth of spam to them as punishment. That's
also too much work.
{^_^}
