Re: Misunderstanding of Remail Headers

[mclow@coyote.csusm.edu (Marshall Clow)]

>At 2:13 AM 12/12/94, L. McCarthy wrote:
>>Hal writes:
>>> There was also a misperception that my remailer was an official effort
>>> endorsed by Portal (again, despite the disclaimers).  Note that it was
>>> they who were contacted, not me (yet).  This might suggest that it will
>>> not be possible to cleanly separate the remailer operators and service
>>> providers when problems like this arise.  Both may end up being hassled
>>> (time will tell whether I am).
>>
[ stuff deleted ]
>The "From:" line seems to be confusing people.  The author of the article
>quoted from the Globe & Mail appearantly didn't even understand the
>disclaimer. The article was worded in such a way to make it seem the
>disclaimer was saying that Bob Rae didn't really write the message, as
>opposed to saying that Hal Finney didn't really write the message!
>Something needs to be done so that even the most internet clueless will
>understand that the message _isn't_ from Finney or McCarthy or Joe Random
>RemailerOp, which appearantly isn't clear to many people currently.

While I'm all for having clear disclaimers, the facts remain:
1)  You can't force people to read.
2)  Even if you could, you can't force people to understand.

Improve the disclaimers, sure. But don't think that this problem is going
to go away because of it.

-- Marshall (who has just blown his lurker status) :-)

Marshall Clow
Aladdin Systems
mclow@san_marcos.csusm.edu