Dealing with Abusive E-Mail? 49
sheetzam asks: "I am the manager of the mail system for a reasonable (3000 employees) sized media company. Recently a website has decided to post the e-mail addresses of a few of our employees, and suggest readers send those people abuse. We know we have no legal recourse for removing the e-mail addresses from the offending web site. We can't filter the abusive e-mail based on header information because it is coming from many places. Our only choice seems to be to change the person's e-mail address. If this were an abusive phone call, we'd know exactly how to handle it. But e-mail is quite different. How are others dealing with this?"
A couple of things to try (Score:3, Funny)
Might be a good idea to contact the police, both where you are, and where the person who put this web site up is. This is just in case they get nasty and do something violent (could happen, don't take any chances). They might also be able to suggest some legal recourse.
Finally, why not post the URL for the website here on Slashdot? We'll knock them over in no time...
Re:A couple of things to try (Score:1)
It's also entirely possible that it's deserved...
Re:A couple of things to try (Score:1)
Re:A couple of things to try (Score:3, Informative)
Well, I've done some preliminary data mining.
Heres what I found.
The posters name is Anthony M Sheetz.
He lives in Washington DC.
He works for the Washington Post.
He also has the E-Mail address "sheetzam@washpost.com".
A whole lot of other stuff which I'm not going to post here(home address, phone number, etc... scary what you can find!)
Now for the site in question. Assuming the above information is correct, a search can be done for washington post employee E-Mail addresses. I could easily compile a much larger list of the actual E-Mail addresses from the information I got, but I'll try to make a guess at the site.
First site-I don't think this one is it:
TechBalt.com [aol.com] has "lists of email addresses and names of people who you need to email about our initiative to change Baltimore." This isn't exactly encouraging _abuse_ per say... But here is the list they published for the Washington Post:
The Washington Post
Jerry Knight- wtknight@washpost.com
Leslie Walker- walkerl@washpost.com
Yuki Noguchi- Noguchiy@washpost.com
A MUCH more likely site is http://www.vojvodina.com/mailovi.htm [vojvodina.com]. They list:
abramowitz@washpost.com,achenbachj@washpos
-
priestd@washpost.com,proulxl@washpost.com,r
Thats MUCH bigger that the previous list!!! Thats only about half the list! Too bad the site's in some language Babelfish won't translate.
There are a whole lot of other sites too.
Can anyone here translate that site with the larger list? That might be the one, but I can't tell what its about.
Re:Background on the site (Score:2)
I don't speak the language but the address list suggests it might have to do with the attacks on Yugoslavia in 1999. They still list Bill Clinton as President and NATO officers are included in the list as well.
Re:A couple of things to try (Score:2)
As another poster suggested, this page is about an email campaign against the NATO bombardments of Serbia in 1999. The short paragraph below the title simply gives some directions on how to use the email addresses and recommends some program for bulk email.
Re:A couple of things to try (Score:2)
Hint for newbies: make sure your slightly better handle has a nice english word in it. That way it turns up a ka-zillion hits in a google search, and discourages casual identification.
Of course, I bet I'm just tempting fate now, aren't I? First person to call me at home gets a cookie.
Re:A couple of things to try (Score:1)
To add some possible confirmation to that theory:
This site [lotus.com] would suggest that the Washington Post has about 3000 users, which is the size of organization specified.
Note that it is, or was a Lotus Domino based system.
Broadly speaking, I would say the Washington Post were the good guys, wouldn't you ?
D.
Re:A couple of things to try (Score:4, Insightful)
Finally, why not post the URL for the website here on Slashdot?
That's assuming the website wasn't slashdot in the first place. It's not unknown for folks to post corporate email addresses here when in high dudgeon and suggest that other people make their feelings known. At least when it's done here, though, it's not abuse, but simply sticking it to The Man. :)
Re:A couple of things to try (Score:2)
And, as many have said here, how do we know this "media company" isn't just getting what's coming to it?
Why are they emailing you? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why are they emailing you? (Score:2)
In any case, this seems to be a particularly bad topic. I am going to posit that the noise/signal ration grows as a function of the log of the log of time elapsed since slashdot started, approximately.
Re:Why are they emailing you? (Score:1)
90second Confirmation (Score:2)
Whilst I also wondered, I did my own research/data mining and turned up rather than jumping to conclusions.
1) The poster sheetzam[at]earthlink.net also posted these messages.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=
These suggest he is Anthony M Sheetz, the postmaster or SysOp for the Washington post.
This search seems to confirm this.
In 90 Seconds we seem to have confirmed, this is not junk emailer, troll and has nothing to do with RIAA/MPI. Indeed it would seem to be a legit bastion of free press.
Treat it as legitimate feedback (Score:5, Interesting)
You may perceive it as abuse, but it is also a chance to put across your side of the story.
The first thing to do is to route the incoming mail correctly. Many mail systems permit redirection of mail "by rule", including by content of the body of the message.
The first step is to do this is to ask all the people affected by this feedback campaign to forward these mails to a single mailbox, and then to analyse the messages for words they use. Typically, with campaign-type mails, people use very similar phrases to those used by the writer of the campaigning website. So, if the writer says, "Write to corporation X, and tell them to stop oppressing the natives of Peru", a shedload of people will write in and include the phrase, "Stop oppressing the natives of Peru!" in their message.
Set up a rule and reroute the messages to a "Unsolicited comment" file. Keep an eye on what gets through and what doesn't, and refine the approach.
The second thing to do is to take all these e-mail addresses, and create a mailing list for issues connected to your company. Get a note or two pumped out saying, "We at Megacorp X take your comments very seriously and are doing A and B about them. Please mail me, Mr Bigcheese if you have any other concerns you'd like to raise." Set up a website yourself and engage these people in debate.
If you just ignore what is happening, it is likely that a number of the correspondents will take the time and trouble to trash your reputation in the market place. Much better to manage the feedback and reach out to its senders.
Abuse should be recognisable (Score:2)
If it is abusive, then there are likely to be recognisable phrases or other patterns in the text. This will likely be particularly true if it is driven from one particular source.
My personal approach would be to write a quick perl program, and alias those e-mail addresses to that. If the program detected abuse, then the program could automatically reply expressing your point of view.
If no abuse was detected then you could just pass the e-mail through to the intended recipient at their new e-mail address, if you want.
This should take only a few hours to implement, max.
Spammers? (Score:4, Interesting)
E.g one of the ones listed on my Shitlist [roxor.co.uk].
So what is this "media" company and why are people angry enough to send abusive emails?
Maybe the abusers are right ? (Score:2, Interesting)
E-mail and petitions can sometimes be the only weapons regular people have to fight something wrong.
Because of this fact, added to the fact that you didn't disclose your company name, nor exactly what idoes, chances are your company really deserves it. In this case, keep your head down and just accept it.
Re:Maybe the abusers are right ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Grow up.
Re:Maybe the abusers are right ? (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think it's wrong to complain. And do you really think an e-mail to compains@riaa.org will make it to the director board ? If one wants to be listened, send it to the right person.
What I think wrong is to let media companies go away unharmed after ideas like these: RIAA Wants Taxpayer-Funded IP Police [slashdot.org], RIAA to DoS Pirates? [slashdot.org] or RIAA Wants Right To Hack [slashdot.org]. Or those copy protections that crashes computers, and, in top of that, they're so greedy that The RIAA Doesn't Like Paying Lyricists [slashdot.org].
And, yes, the people who are receiving these e-mails are real live persons - who are either reponsible or supportive of such ideas. If they didn't agree with these ideas, they wouldn't work there. For instance, I would never work on a tobacco company, because I simply don't agree with killing people. The same way I don't agree with the methods used by most media companies. And if they receive these e-mails during working hours, they'd be doing nothing more than their work.
Re:Maybe the abusers are right ? (Score:2)
which makes them less productive and less willing to work for that company. This makes life hard for the company. which is most likely what they set out to do, because the senders most likely feel wronged. it's a perfectly legit way to screw a company if they've screwed you.
if there's REALLY a lot of complaints, they most likely have a grain of truth.. in which case I feel not a shred of remorse. That's how the market works, unfortunately. to get things done, hit a company in the wallet.
Re:Maybe the abusers are right ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Excuse me??? I have no idea how your comment got modded "4, Insightful," as this appears to be total flamebait.
What if he's not allowed to identify what company he's working for? At many companies, it's standard policy that employees don't reveal their company's name in public forums such as Slashdot. Even if it's not company policy, it's often a smart thing to do so that someone doesn't get flooded with comments about the company they work for when they have no control over the direction of the company.
So, he doesn't say his company's name, so they are probably doing something bad and therefore are deserving of any abuse.
Guilty until proven innocent.
Terrorist until you tack a flag up in your home.
It's all sounding more and more familiar lately. *sigh*
Re:Maybe the abusers are right ? (Score:1)
He(or she?) has a point, and it's not flamebait. And if I had moderation points, I'd give another +1 for that message. It deserves a +5.
Legitimacy (Score:1)
All the suggestions thus far have been sound, but deal with this current epidemic of abuse being active already and also for the forseeable future.
As others have pointed out, maybe blocking these mails isn't the answer, if its a problem with your method of business or who you are, then it would probably be more efficient to speak to the people with the offending website.
How many mails are we talking about anyway?
The Solution (Score:2)
You can't force the web site to take the e-mail addresses down?
No problem!
Just post the site's URL here on /., and we'll take the web site down for ya. Of course, the first zillion slashdotters that manage to get through before the server catches fire will probably make use of those e-mail addresses...
what is 'abuse"? (Score:1, Interesting)
Legit questions not addressed in the parent post. I see neither any indication the company is the 'goodguys" or if the website is "the good guys" so far, so I have no other option than to ask for details. thanks.
Chances are.... (Score:2)
Re:Chances are.... (Score:2)
* [topic of abusive emails or name of website]\
Mime Sweeper must be really easy if that's a lot of work!
I know this is way out there but.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Give us a clue about who you are, what you are doing to make this happen to you, and what steps you have taken on a social level to get fix the problem. You many have just open pandoras box because you may find no one here is very sympathetic to your plight.
I disagree that email is different (Score:1)
Treatening to sue is stupid - what grounds? But if the emails drift into the area of crack calls/treats/etc then the police are more than capable of dealing with this.
Hope this helps
Abusive email (Score:2)
The people sending abusive email, assuming they are actually offensive, are almost certainly violating their Term of Service or Acceptable Usage Policy. Complaining to their ISP will almost cetainly result a termination of service.
earthlink? (Score:2)
Tried and true solution... (Score:1)
If there is any way you can determine the emailers' places of employment (from the email address or info included in the signature), why not forward their letters to their employers?
Put the fear of losing their jobs in 'em. It's a great way to silence critics.
Several ways... (Score:2)
I think the BEST thing to do is to get someone in there who is totally unrelated to what is being complained about. Have them get touchy-feely and converse with them. Tell them you can see their concern and want to know more about it. From there, you could actually learn something, or throw it all in the trash. But if you take it as an opportunity, instead of a problem, you can turn those lemons into lemonade.
Hate mail is probably the best way to show the mettle of your company. Flame back? Ignore it? Standard reply? Embrace it? You choose.