Using invalid.com email addresses

[D'Arcy J.M. Cain]

On Fri, 15 Jan 2010 23:04:57 -0800
Stephen Hansen <apt.shansen at gmail.com> wrote:
> It may or may not be in violation of the RFCs, but the modern reality of the
> internet makes certain "rules" of the RFC's meaningless.

They aren't meaningless.  They also aren't "rules", a term that I did
not use.  The Internet is an anarchy that works on voluntary
cooperation.  The RFCs are simply a codification of best practices.  If
someone doesn't want to be part of the community they should simply
leave.  It's not like anyone is forcing them to participate.

> Spam is a major issue for some people; and some people do not want their
> email address to be trivially harvested, and usenet exposes that address

So non-trivial harvesting is OK?  If you are on the Net you will be
found.  If this is a real problem for you (generic "you", not Stephen)
then get a throwaway account and hide behind it.

Spam is an issue but it is pretty easy to deal with on the personal
level.  Between RBLs, Spamassassin and Bayesian filtering I hardly ever
see a spam these days.

> very easy. You will frequently see people mutate their address, sometimes
> they'll do so in such a way that if you look at it you'll know that if you
> remove parts you will get a real address-- these people allow for personal

Slightly better than using @invalid.com but these people aren't hiding
very well.  Spammers probably get most of those already.  All they do
is make it inconvenient for legitimate correspondents.

> direct communication. Others don't really want to receive any email at all
> based on their newsgroup posting, and want all of your messages to go to the
> group instead-- they generally provide an email address which is utterly
> meaningless.

Or worse as is the case with @invalid.com.

> It may or may not violate certain RFC's, but there's nothing rude about it.
> Its people trying to engage a community and yet hold some measure of control
> over how they engage that community. They have every right, IMHO, regardless
> of what an RFC may say.

That's right.  And I have every right to filter out those people who
don't want to be part of the community that I want to be part of.

> People who may use an invalid.com address simply don't want to be contacted
> individually and directly. Why is that rude? They post to a public forum,

They asked a question and directed answers to someone who was not
involved in the conversation.  How is that not rude.  It caused an
email to be sent to a domain that was not involved in the
conversation, required them to process the message, send back a
response (because they do follow the RFCs) require my system to
process the bounce and finally for me to deal with the message
telling me that the address I thought that I was sending to doesn't
exist.  Convenient for the person asking the question, inconvenient
for everyone else.  

> and they simply want to communicate solely in that public forum. They have

Then they should use a forum, not Usenet or a mailing list.

> no moral obligation to provide a means for personal or direct communication,
> in my mind at least. To me, demanding a real address from people in the
> usenet medium which has nothing even vaguely like privacy protection is

I won't even get into my opinions on gatewaying between Usenet groups
and mailing lists.  :-)

> rude. If someone chooses to provide it, great. If not, just as fine. One is
> obligated only to share with us what they wish, and all power to them in
> whatever capacity they wish to share.

And I have no obligation to share with anyone who doesn't want to
follow the RFCs.  That's why I blacklisted @invalid.com.  My choice.

That's the last on this subject from me here since it is off topic.  If
you want to discuss privately you better have a real address.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at druid.net>         |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.