AOL Newsreader Bug, and Larry Smith's "Sabotage" Accusations
Ted Frank
To the Usenet community:
There seems to be a bug in the AOL newsreader that reads normal
newspost "Followup-To" headers as "Followup-To: poster". Because of
this, careless or indifferent AOL users are sending unwanted e-mail to
people. AOL is responding by blaming the Usenet community at large,
rather than explaining normal rules of netiquette or fixing the bug.
Does anyone know of an AOL address to contact about this? I'm only
getting form e-mails from the standard ones.
About a month and a half ago, I started receiving insulting and
abusive e-mails from clar...@aol.com, Larry Smith. I complained to
him, and he responded by claiming that I was "forcing" him to respond to
my Usenet posts by e-mail. I took this as the ravings of a kook; I've
been posting for seven years, and this is the first I've heard anyone
accuse me of this.
Mr. Smith, however, persisted both in the e-mail and the
accusations, and, after I cc'ed him on a complaint to AOL administrators,
claimed that AOL substantiated his story that not only I, but
misc.legal.moderated moderator Mark Eckenwiler, were conspiring against
him by forcing him to send e-mail.
I posted the headers of the allegedly offending posts to the
newsgroup, and invited Mr. Smith to substantiate his reckless
accusation. He has thus far chosen only to repeat it, and repeated his
claim that AOL agreed with his position:
In article <199805312132...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
Clara pegg <clar...@aol.com> wrote:
>No inability to name the AOL staffer I talked with in AOL's Jacksonville, FL
>office, just unwillingness, although I have his full name and the results of
>his probe into your sabotage. So TED FRANK lies again, then tries to cover up
>his own deceptions.
>
>The fact is that the staffer went to both TED FRANK'S and MARK ECKENWILER'S
>posts under MoeLye in misc.legal and found that both of them had been jammed
>with illicit configurations.
Now, because Mr. Smith refuses to name his source, it's not clear to me
whether AOL really said these wildly untrue things because a know-nothing
talked to Mr. Smith, or because Mr. Smith is embellishing or inventing.
The fact that Mr. Smith doesn't *always* send me e-mail, and the fact
that he has exhibit germs of rationality from time to time that the
typical kook does not always, however, led me to wonder.
>Now that AOL has
>made its discovery of your sabotage, filed a report on it, and made due
>response, you no longer bug the newsgroups with this device. This reply comes
>conventionally without your little furtive curse.
I looked at the newsgroup headers of Mark Eckenwiler's post. It had a
standard customized Followup-To header. As did my post that Mr. Smith
complained about. The post that Mr. Smith claims I did not "sabotage,"
however, had the default Followup-To header.
In short, either Mr. Smith is entirely crazy (a not entirely impossible
conjecture; I haven't had this problem with anyone else in seven years),
or AOL newsreaders are interpreting
"Followup-To: misc.legal"
as
"Followup-To: poster"
Here are the headers on this post that you are reading now.
Newsgroups: news.admin.net-abuse.usenet,news.admin.net-abuse.e-mail,misc.legal
Subject: AOL Newsreader Bug, and Larry Smith's "Sabotage" Accusations
Summary:
Expires:
References: <199805312132...@ladder01.news.aol.com>
Sender:
Followup-To: news.admin.net-abuse.usenet
Distribution:
Organization: RadixNet Internet Services, Md. USA
Keywords:
Cc:
As you can see, there is no requirement in this header to send e-mail to
the poster. I've set followups on this post to
news-admin.net-abuse.usenet. Readers with both AOL and normal accounts can
post whether they experience similar problems as Mr. Smith, or whether
he's inventing it. If the former, they can tell whether it's a function
of AOL or of my post.
In the meantime, this does not excuse Mr. Smith; he knows that I do not
wish to receive his e-mail regarding his obsession with me and my wife,
but he seems to think AOL has given him carte blanche to continue his
abuse, because it's the victim's fault, even though nothing requires him
to click "yes" in response to the AOL newsreader bug. Anyone have advice on
who to complain to at AOL?
>AOL will be interested to hear about this from you. I have turned it over to
>them for their disposition and give you this notice that your sabotage is
>actionable in law. I am going to go back to posting in my usual manner and
>expect no further distractions.
If someone could politely explain to Mr. Smith that he's wrong, I'd
appreciate it as well. He's long since stopped listening to me since he
found out I once worked for someone with whose politics he disapproves.
--
http://www.radix.net/~moe
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