Slashdot Mirror
Dealing with Abusive E-Mail?
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?"
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...
Before I (and I imagine a fair few others) decide whether to lend a hand, I'd like to know why people are emailing you in a manner you seem abusive. Respond and put your side of the case forward, and show us the web site so we can make up our own mind.
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.
"Well, put a stake in my heart and drag me into sunlight."
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.
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.
Line 9: Argument of type SIGNATURE expected.
This sounds like the kind of question a spamming company might ask.
E.g one of the ones listed on my Shitlist.
So what is this "media" company and why are people angry enough to send abusive emails?
no sig.
You said you work on a media company. RIAA and MPAA are the incarnation of evil, and totally abuse their consumers. Some media companies just push the limits and want to make rules, such as hacking into users machines looking for MP3s , making CD's that break computers, etc. This kind of stupid things MUST be fought.
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.
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...
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Being a reasonable size media company, that you rely heavily on Microsoft products. There are numerous mail filtering packages, such as Mime Sweeper, that can filter these abusive messages rather effectively out of the box. For a Linux solution, you will have to do a lot more work but, it is still possible.
Did you ever think about getting in contact with them and maybe talking to them about the problem. It sounds like this guy/girl had and issue that did not get resolved, and resorted to using the only means they had, e-mail. Now we preach the power of such things here, and it looks like it is working. They got your attention, no? Now you did not give any specifics about your problem "why they are doing this" so I can't say that this is even something you want to do. There are not many people here that are going to feel sorry for a Media Company. It is even a good chance that the very person sending you this e-mail is from this community, and I find it ironic the one of the very "media corps" that many of the people here hate with a passion may be here asking the people causing the problem how to stop it. That is it thick baby.
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.
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
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.
Before I (and I imagine a fair few others) decide whether to lend a hand, I'd like to know why people are emailing you in a manner you seem abusive. Respond and put your side of the case forward, and show us the web site so we can make up our own mind.
U TF -8&q=sheetzam%40earthlink.net&btnG=Google+Sear ch
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.
Hey his email address is at earthlink, I'm sure i get tonnes of abusive emails from that spamming company every day.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
There is the generic form letter. Nothing says, "I don't care. Go away. Here's my answer" like a form letter does. But it really doesn't generate good PR.
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.