Re: Verification of Registration

Curious.  Did anyone else receive this unsolicitated *invitation*?

At 11:31 PM 10/23/95 -0700, verify@cnet.com wrote:
>Your membership registration has been processed.  To become a full member
>of c|net online, please return the text of this message (to verify@cnet.com).
>
>The following magic token in this message [cypherpunks::752400770] will be
automatically
>processed to verify you.  Please note: The number included in the token is
>*not* your password; the one to use on the site is the one you entered on
>the registration form.
>
>Please include the complete token appearing above, including the brackets.
>The best way to return it to us is to include this entire message in your
>reply.  If you mailer does not allow you to do this, retype or cut and
>paste the magic token (including the square brackets) into a new message to
>verify@cnet.com. If you are having difficulty completing this process,
>please direct your questions to support@cnet.com.
>
>Once you are verified you will be able to take advantage of the full
>range of c|net online's services.
>
>

********************************************************************
Lynne L. Harrison, Esq.
Poughkeepsie, New York 
lharrison@mhv.net

"Say not, 'I have found the truth', but rather, 'I have found a truth.'"
                         - Kahlil Gibran from "The Prophet"
********************************************************************

hello, Lynne--

i did, as well.  odd.  any clues?

regards,
--robert
--

o  robert owen thomas: unix consultant. cymro ydw i. user scratching post.  o
o       e-mail: Robert.Thomas@pamd.cig.mot.com --or-- robt@cymru.com        o
o               vox:  708.435.7076   fax:  708.435.7360                     o
o        "When I die, I want to go sleeping like my grandfather...          o
o              Not screaming like the passengers in his car."               o

verify@cnet.com writes:
> Your membership registration has been processed. [...]
> The number included in the token is *not* your password;
> the one to use on the site is the one you entered on
> the registration form.

Lynne L. Harrison, Esq. writes:
>   Curious.  Did anyone else receive this unsolicitated *invitation*?

...and several other people said "me too !!" to the 1000+ people on the list.

<sigh>

We really do have a lot of new people here these days, don't we ?  :}

OK, first of all, yes, we all got it, it was sent to the list address.

Second of all, sending messages that amount to "me too !", with lots of
gratuitous quoted text, to a large mailing list is generally a _very_
poor idea. This advice generally occurs in the first few pages of any general
guide to Usenet, netiquette, etc.  I wonder why they publish those things ?
No-one seems to read them....

Thirdly, what has happened is that someone has registered for a service at a
web site and given the c'punks list address as the membership address. 
Reply email is a standard mechanism for verifying an address.

Now, a while back some c'punks made a habit of signing up for various 
(usually free) services on the net, and publicizing the username/password
pairs, to stymie the collection of membership profiles etc. Often a
fairly standard combination like username=cypherpunk,password=cypherpunk was
used so people could easily guess the right pair for any given site.

Unfortunately, many people gave the list address as the member contact
address when they registered somewhere. Getting spammed with a potentially
huge number of registration confirmations isn't very helpful to the list.
Various people have asked everyone to cease signing the list up to these
sites. But the paradigm seems to have caught on a bit too well, and we still
get confirmation messages periodically.

Finally, have a nice day. 

Enough history -- now back to social studies with Alice.... 

-Futplex <futplex@pseudonym.com>