I have a problem that mainly concerns a small 'culture' list I manage
(VALLEYS-L, on the South Wales Valleys). Here's a synopsis of the
situation, roughly in chronological order :
* I received some pretty vicious materials by email (main themes of abuse :
references to drugs, blood, religion, and lots of psychobabble) a month and
a half ago. The emails was in response to a message I posted to another
list (where I'm a subscriber) and I'm in the process of contacting that
lists owners to explain the situation. (I'm not sure of the other list
manager's obligations in this respect?)
* The abuser sends a message with sicko imagery... this time _to_ the list.
[Thank God] I was experimenting with the list at the time and it was only
open to subscribers to post... His message was bounced.
* I do not respond to a single one of his messages, so he takes his
abuse elsewhere :
* A list-post of mine is sent to a newsgroup. This was no big deal .
However, he has also posted a lot of Usenet posts in the same newsgroup
that are quite libellous/provocative. This may affect people's perception
of the list (see below, for why it's difficult to respond to this critic)
in the long term... If people perceive that there's a nutter loose on a
list, then I do not think they would wish to join.
* I started getting v-e-r-y paranoid (this guy makes subtle references
that suggest he has done some research) changing passwords on accounts,
checking all logs in detail from past emails. I discover that the Abuser
joined a list (it lasted 2 months, but fulfilled its role) I was involved
in early Summer, 1997... his email message to me gives me a 'lead' : The
originating IP Address comes from the Web Proxy Server of the biggest
British ISP, Demon. Could it be spoofed/faked... I don't know, I have no
idea how clever this time-waster is, and it's too damned technical for me.
* He uses a Hotmail Com email address. All his messages (except the one
from Demon) have this "X-Originating-IP: [209.75.196.2]" on it, or variants
on that. A DNS reverse lookup gives "sol.infonex.com" and that suggests
the http://www.anonymizer.com. They're sent via myriad.alias.net, when
they go to Usenet.
* Contacted Hotmail Com but they've been soooo reluctant to do anything...
giving me some rubbish about "you didn't send all the Path headers in your
email to abuse@hotmail.com" which was not true as I quoted every single
iota of mail received from the Hotmail Customer.
* Contacted Demon Net Ltd... but they deny that this is from their
Customer. Highly convenient for them, I daresay.
* I've used 'he' and 'guy' as I'm almost certain this is a male.
Managing my list, my main worres are that the Abuser (i) could do the same
thing to other people on my list with possible legal repercussions for
myself (see iii); (ii) worryingly, has done this type of thing before but
now is going a little more 'professional' (experimenting with a simple
web/'anon' interface for a Hotmail account; (iii) the VALLEYS-L list is
small, in its infancy, and this guy could really kill any growth potential;
(iv) time wasted dealing with this pest could be better spent experimenting
with a Majordomo/Linux platform to move my list to.
If this post is off-topic, or too long here then please accept my sincere
apologies. I've read nearly _all_ the archives, especially with interest
the bits about methods/stategies of catching people who re-post list
material to Usenet et. al.
I really haven't got a clue where to start on this problem, so _any_ help
would be gratefully appreciated. If you want precise details though, I
would rather that be by email. At this stage, if I could prove that this
guy is posting from Demon Net Ltd., then the problem is solved because he's
broken their Acceptable Usage Policy and his account is terminated.
Sincerely,
--
Darren Rees mailto:merlin@netlink.co.uk
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