actually, it can be due to server problems. motorola sent me an email once meant for a different customer, not a machine generated email, but an answer to a question that was "privileged" (though not enough details to have meant much, but it easily could have revealed product plans etc.). i notified them of the problem, with full source of the email and they were very grateful, i wound up explaining it to a couple of their technical people. they didn't tell me exactly what happened, but they did tell me roughly how it had happened. =20 i agree however, electronic signatures don't solve many problems, any one who want to fake them deliberately can, unless they employ encryption, and few readers check such signatures (and if such signing became routine practice, you would soon see viruses imitating it, in fact some spam has bogus "pgp" signatures designed to fool spam filters). =20 it would be rather foolish for any admin to block the source address of a virus as there are several that fake this somewhat convincingly and you would obviously be blocking a customer (indeed, even crackers spoof ip numbers in real time, still, it's a valuable technique particularly if you've managed to corrupt routing tables). instead, at most they should email back that they "may" be infected, or more likely someone with them in their address book is infected.=20 including a disclaimer/statement of "confidentiality" on email that isn't does tend to reduce it's legal weight, and many, many competitors would make full use of any such accidental disclosure.( according to the "cryptogram" news letter by bruce schneir). besides, such a statement will have little or no deterrent value against the unscrupulous in the best of cases. and, even worse there is now case law that states that it's ok to monitor email, any email that runs through your' machine, even as a relay, and to make commercial use of that information. it is being appealed. it stems from the barnes and noble case where they were monitoring some email sent to amazon.com users and making them offers for the same books apparently. several of the people involved plead guilty under a plea-bargaining arraignment, but one was found not guilty as a judge decided that the wire tap laws have no application to email, and therefore there was no crime! the ruling implies that any email you send carries with it no legal expectation to privacy what so ever, at least in the U.S., or if it simply goes through a relay in the U.S. further, with some of the bogus "hacking" cases that have been tried lately it's debatable whether you should even report it to the sender (people have been charged, arrested, and plea-bargained after bringing to light security holes which they accidentally discovered, promptly reported to the machines administrator/owner, and did not make any use of. in fact in one case they plead guilty to a felony, which has long standing consequences for their employability, basically destroying their professional life). once again, we have policy makers and the courts ruling on things they don't understand, and making some very alarming decisions. if it really needs to be private, you'd better mail it, that's about all that is well protected at all, or use strong encryption. Nate Duehr wrote: ------ >=20 > The only way I would ever RECEIVE such a message is if: > a) You accidentally sent it to me, thus negating the restriction on "wh= o > it was intended for". > b) Some mail adminstrator so screwed up his mail server that he copied > it into my personal Inbox. > c) Pursuant to the other discussion about signatures/encryption -- some > dude (easily) sniffed your mail traffic and forwarded it to me. And if ----- --=20 =93Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it politic? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular- but one must take it simply because it is right.=94 : Martin Luther King Jr. 1929-1968 _______________________________________________ http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist