Hi!

Many people started to discuss the acceptability of software sending
information without the user having a choice not to. This is a
multi-user database application (between 10 and 2000 users on one
database) with about 50 databases installed. There is a multitude of
applications within our system and some manage data about people. The
German law requires complete protocolls of any changes made to person
related data: Who, when, what. So there are many things users may not
like, but they are not the ones to decide... it's a corporate decision
and the administration can change settings to not send the error
mails... or send them to someone else.

There is nothing secret about these mails, they are not encrypted or
binary or anything. The data is stored into the database as well, but we
would have to actively search all those databases for new errors and
sometimes the connection to the database goes down, but mail may still work.

We do not inform the user because when we started to deploy our system
without the error mails, most of our users rather did not work with the
system than to tell anybody! There is a psychological aspect to this: An
error is, no matter what text you display, a problem to the unsuspecting
person that just caused it. Many think it is *their fault*! They really
do! And so they tell nobody... someone might think they are stupid. Only
people that are very shure of using the system can distinguish between
something they did and something the system did wrong.

And I do not think error mails can be compared to the global user ids
that MS adds to any document you edit, which is in my eyes a reason to
put Bill in jail... but the Anglo-Saxon philosophy behind laws is
different from other countries: You rely on strong penalties (usually
"the market") if something did happen, while we prefer to have laws that
protect us from things to happen (but that admittedly makes the laws
much more complex).


Regards
  R�diger

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