Hello, Terry: Almost everybody is attacked by the spammers, but I think nobody I know would take offense as quickly as the person mentioned below when the stakes are so high. There are cultural problems that accompany the technology problems. I certainly don't ignore them, but I also assume that the culture of mail and email is slowly evolving. Examples of change (and upset) abound in good old snail mail, too.
Thursday, September 4, 2003, 10:31:19 AM, you wrote: (snip) T> As to any complaints, I'll share one of my clients' experiences with T> you. He was interested in purchasing some property in a new city (new T> site for a factory with a budget of over $1 million for the property) T> and was given a real estate agent's e-mail address by some business T> associate. That real estate company used a some business T> challenge/response T> solution. My client chose not some business T> to do business with them. Or, even use the phone to contact them instead of email? or ask an employee to take care of that? I won't judge this and say that everybody should feel perfectly happy about these C-R systems. Nor do we feel perfectly happy about inoculations before we take trips into jungles. Some people will refuse inoculations; they may miss some nice opportunities for travel because of the offense of that needle. (What would have been the status of smallpox now if all had refused inoculations due to the (infrequent) discomfort of that needle?) T> My client was adamant about the way business should be conducted T>and in his mind, it didn't include C/R. Quote from him - "They just T>told me I wasn't important." He certainly takes offense quickly, and he takes it very personally. I guess you'd need to be there to understand his frame of mind. I'm guessing that when he started out in business (if as long ago as I did) he also had none of the benefits of the 'Net. Which he cherry-picks now, no doubt. T> I'm not saying that he's right or that he would have ultimately bought T> property using that company, but they lost out on even the opportunity T> to do business with him. Because of his principles, and his short fuse, he may also have lost the chance to look at a piece of property what might possibly have been the best of all available, and even perhaps a great value. It works both ways. Was that challenge message really worse than leaving a voicemail message over lunch hour (or after hours) and then waiting for an eventual reply? What's in the water some folks are drinking these days? :-) Actually, many of us are offended by high technology of various sorts, and that is OK. But the costs are not all on one-sided. T> It was his perception and in business, that's often what ends up as T>being most important. I agree with that. Perhaps businesses with so much at stake in one transaction will have more expensive foolproof systems that will look carefully at every piece of new mail to ensure that there is no possible way to miss a legitimate message. But most can't afford to do that, and I think that people will eventually understand this. T> Here are two articles that discuss some of the points you raised in T> this e-mail and others in the thread. T> http://www.politechbot.com/p-04746.html T> http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000389.html I have just read these and appreciate your thoughtfulness in sending them. Yes, It's not an easy job. In fact it's a dirty job dealing with spam. And I guess some of the mud will stick on us when we try to deal with it. Best wishes, David ________________________________________________ Current version is 2.00 | "Using TBUDL" information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
