Exactly Why Nuking Is a Bad Idea

[Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan <dmckiern@weber.ucsd.edu>]

On Thu, 6 Jul 1995, Mikael Jakonen wrote:

> I have a sollution that some might think is a bad idea:
> 
> We all agree (even all lurkers) to send a couple of copies each back to 
> those post ads. 
> Nuke them with their own posts!  ;-)
> That way they will (hopefully) learn to stay away.
> 
> The only problem is: where to draw the line between an OK post and
> those to nuke.

Unfortunately, there are other problems as well.

The ads fall into four classes:

(1) Ads from purely temporary accounts.  The poster has accepted a
trial account with AOL, CompuServe, Delphi, or whomever, and is
=only= going to use it to post ads during the trial period, and then
bail.  The poster isn't going to even be around to read the email.
And these carriers are =not= going to go to the expense of tracking
down and suing the poster.

(2) Ads from more persistent accounts, with normal header info.
Here, the best thing to do is to forward a copy of the ad to
postmaster or root at the host-site.  The administrator will either
strip the user of access to the computer, or warn the user that any
repetition will cause such loss.  In the latter case, some sort of
nuking would perhaps reinforce the point.

(3) Ads from persistent accounts, with partially censored headers.
In this case, your mail handler may report that there is a missing
user-id and/or a missing host-site.  However, if you =save= the
message as a file, and then look at the full header with a text
editor, you can sometimes find (1) the site-name, and (2), a message
id.  In this case, do =not= send the message to postmaster with the
=forward= command of your mail handler, because important info may
be stripped out of the header by your handler.  =Instead=, start a
=new= message to postmaster, and then read the saved message into
the body of your message.  The administrator can use the message-id
to identify the culprit.  The administrator will strip the user of
the account.

(4) Ads with thoroughly censored headers.  Through a combination of
lax security at some sites, and a bit of expertise on the part of
the user, it is sometimes possible to make it impracticable to track
a message.  Unless someone here is a really good counter-hacker, we
can't do anything about such postings.

          It's always Dark.  Light only hides the Darkness.

          Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan           (619) 535 - 0546
          athanatos@UCSD.edu   132.239.147.2    <75013,676>