This is why I'm still on Windows XP; I like the Start Menu and being able to group my applications by purpose in a *menu*. I don't want them littered over the desktop or in silly toolbars.
The parent post is from Alex Belits, a jobless Linux astroturfer. Last time he submitted his resume to anyone was when he tried to be Linus Torvalds bootlicker and was turned down for drool.
See how nicely that fits there loony tunes? Oh and I'm not working for anyone but myself, I am your worst nightmare...I'm a retailer. you see we have tried your product and found your bullshit and lies to be just that so maybe you'd like me to enlighten some of the masses, hmm?,
Isn't it sad, how like a frightened child afraid to look under the bed, you cower at the truth? if your driver model isn't shit then why does Dell have to run their own repos even though we are talking a teeny tiny subset of hardware? Oh right because Linux shits itself and dies if you use the default repos! Man that is some excellent product you got there! Bleeding yet douchey? want some more? nice thing about having the truth on your side, you can keep throwing punches all day! How about how a decade old Windows beat the shit out of Linux on netbooks or how ASUS has given up on your bullshit or how about Walmart running away from linux as fast as it can? You got the crazy koolaid drunk enough to say they ALL are paid shills because they won't do your forum dance or CLI horseshit? Meanwhile your "hero" Torvalds the great says Plans? We don't need no steenkin plans!. Why don't you tell them that at work next week, see how quick you get a pink slip? More? How about you actually have the balls to celebrate getting a whole 1% market share while you are actually lower than JavaME and there is a whole website dedicated To your bullshit and excuses.
Meanwhile i'll go back to enjoying my nice new Asus EEE Windows 7 HP netbook, which I got myself as a little prezzie with some of the profits I made from NOT carrying an inferior product. If you don't like being last? Try putting out a product worth actually stocking. You know what you remind me of? A religious nutball. When someone points out a hole in your dogma you go "La la la, it can't be true! U must be a M$ Ninja!" while we all laugh at your batshit insanity. But hey friend here is a nice video of your hero RMS showing why he is the great one so that should cheer you up.
In the US there has been one known HIV transmission through blood transfusion in the last 8 years the chances of getting HIV from a blood transfusion are 1 in 1,500,000. 1 in 400 people who get stuck with a needle or cut with a sharp from a person with HIV contract the virus there have been 57 cases of health care workers getting HIV at work there are 12,000,000 health care workers. Getting HIV is not that easy mostly bad decisions have to be made to get HIV. The chances that you get HIV from a source besides sex and sharing needles is too small to consider 0.000002% you have a better chance of dieing from constipation.
My understanding is the Terminal Services (a.k.a. RDP) support is part of the proprietary plugin; the version most distros have in their repositories has VNC support enabled. AFAIK it is a compile time switch in the OSE version.
Try typing VBoxHeadless --help and see if any VNC options are listed.
I have one system (at home) that is running the OSE version from the Ubuntu VirtualBox PPA, and it definitely supports VNC.
You're absolutely right - app-emulation/virtualbox has support for VNC, app-emulation/virtualbox-bin has RDP.
I had no idea VBox supported VNC. Thanks again, that'll save me a few headaches!
My understanding is the Terminal Services (a.k.a. RDP) support is part of the proprietary plugin; the version most distros have in their repositories has VNC support enabled. AFAIK it is a compile time switch in the OSE version.
Try typing VBoxHeadless --help and see if any VNC options are listed.
I have one system (at home) that is running the OSE version from the Ubuntu VirtualBox PPA, and it definitely supports VNC.
USB in guests still works fine for me (well maybe "fine" is too strong of a word... let's just say it didn't seem to get any worse when they switched to the plugin architecture). I run a Ubuntu 10.04 host with Windows and Linux guests of various flavors, so YMMV if your setup is different.
The minor weirdness I've noticed is that the Open Source binaries which are available on their site (without the plugin) have no remote console capability, even though the OSE version available on most Linux distros has a built-in VNC console server. So they effectively still have two separate versions...
I've been using the binary version (via Gentoo) of VirtualBox, and it "supports" Terminal Services for connecting to the console. Never works of course.
Are you implying that the compiled version has VNC instead? If so, I'll start recompiling right now - I don't see why they chose Terminal Services for connecting to one instance...
The pirated version of the game a buggy as hell, and everyone is pirate themed, which I have a feeling is intended.
Who knows? It might be the original that's buggy and the torrent shows quite how badly written it is.
(in fact, nowhere does it mention that the pirated game has extra bugs, so it's likely that this is true)
It would be unusual for a torrented game to be worse and more freedom-restricting than actually paying for it.
Ok,ok. It's not that I'm suggesting this new idea is a bad one; just that it is a novelty and I can't see it being profitable for EA to put pirate hats on all of the Sims.
I would like to note that it state opened. Since an e-mail is data it can be read directly without being 'opened'. The only protection that is available to them is if it's encrypted. Here in the us that would make it illegal to decrypt under the DMCA, with a few exceptions. I believe the EU has a similar law that would protect encrypted e-mails as well.
That's irrelevant - the original post was about applying the postal laws to email. If these domain squatters 'knows or reasonably suspects the post has been incorrectly delivered'; then if we were to apply these laws to domains and email - it would be illegal. Encryption is entirely irrelevant.
And in fact "typosquatting" does happen in the UK with real physical mail and it is not illegal.
One of the obsolete UK railway companies ceased to legally exist. Making it possible to create a new company named that. Somebody did so, presumably intending to some day create merchandise which would legally use this significant name, which would have some cachet in the hobbyist market, but wouldn't cause any real confusion.
But instead they got piles of mail intended for whatever railway company was currently responsible for this or that problem somewhere in the country. Demands for payment of utility bills, requests for authority to dig things up, and so on. They opened these letters, and they wrote very caustic replies, pointing out the foolishness of sending letters to a company based on the fact that it has the same name as a company which was at some previous time responsible for something.
After a while they got threatening legal letters, and they began writing back to the client (not the lawyer) pointing out that a lawyer who can't even send their threatening letters to the right people is maybe not worth hiring. This resulted in even more useless threatening legal letters.
I'm fairly sure I've heard of this. But this new company wasn't deliberately set up for confusion; and it has no other running company to be confused with. If the company name or addressee is the same, it would be difficult for them to know it was a misdelivered package.
Its not relevant whether it was delivered to the right box; because the law clearly states "without reasonable excuse, opens a postal packet which they know or suspect to have been delivered incorrectly".
That is, unless you can think of a way of ensuring post is misdelivered to you, whilst making sure you never even begin to suspect that it wasn't meant to be delivered to you.
My reply was meant to be a poke at the lack of knowledge surrounding the postal system (the OP was misinformed over the law), and how these laws cannot be related to email. However, if you want to apply them - you can't simply interpret them how you want. This thread has taken it way too seriously and completely missed the point.
just because my bank sent my bank statement to your house by accident, that does not give you the right to read or open it (at least not via post in the UK)
Which has nothing to do with email and domain squatting and so on.
If my name is Bill Smith and I live at 12 Station St and your bank decides to send your bank statement to me addressed as:
Bill Smith
12 Station St.
Then surely it can not be against the law for me open the letter? How do I know it isn't for me before I open it?
That's what I'm saying - if my name is Bill Smith and you cannot possibly "know or suspect to have been delivered incorrectly", then surely you opening it to find out would be considered a "reasonable excuse" under the law, no?
I'm sure it's not the customers' mistake when the bank sends their statement to the wrong address.
That doesn't mean you can legally open it if it's clear you "know or suspect to have been delivered incorrectly" under the UK postal law.
The law doesn't explain what those indications might be, but if we're going to apply the UK postal law to email; these are considerations that should be made.
WTFety-F? How can an email be delivered to a person other than the recipient? The recipient is exactly who the email was delivered to, that's the very definition. I'll spare you further embarrassment and presume you meant 'intended recipient' - but in that case, how can the *actual* recipient know what was going through the mind of the sender, based solely on the fact that the email APPEARED IN HIS OR HER MAILBOX?
Seriously? I was making a comparison to the post office; because that's how the conversation started. Go back to the beginning of the thread and you might not feel so angry.
For example, if this were to apply to the mail; if for example you have a wildcarded email, and you receive that is not addressed to your normal email address and with a different name would imply that it is not for you. Thankfully there is a fairly clear part of the law that speaks of "reasonable excuse". An identical name or insufficient information would be an example of this.
However, setting up a fake domain name that is similarly named to another, under the UK law, you could be fairly sure that you "reasonably suspect the post has been incorrectly delivered" and therefore opening it (under the UK law) would be illegal...
I'm not saying I agree with the law; but BMO (above) said "You get something unsolicited, and you are free to do with it whatever you choose. It's up to the sender to get the address right in all cases." - that's not true under the UK law. If you receive a bank statement with someone else's name on it, it almost certainly wouldn't be lawful to open it.
While I'll agree the 'envelope' was correct - it was delivered to the correct address; the person who it was delivered to was not the recipient.
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
By definition, if something is addressed to you and you get it, then you are the "recipient". It does not matter what the thing is that you received, or why you received it. And, even the UK law you quote agrees with this definition, and gives only examples of when the mail is "addressed to someone else". This law is the US is similar. For example, the Post Office even made ads about how receiving something by mail that you did not request doesn't make you obligated to pay for it, because scammers were sending unrequested items via the mail and enclosing bills, then suing for non-payment.
That's irrelevant. I can't (literally nor legally) start a fake company with the same address as another, without it being unlawful to open their post.
I.e. it may have been delivered to your letterbox, but that doesn't mean you can legally open a letter from the bank that's addressed to your parents from the comfort of your basement.
You don't seem to want to acknowledge the difference between incorrectly delivered and incorrectly addressed. If someone puts my address in the To field and it arrives in my inbox then it was correctly delivered. Whether they intended for me to receive the email or not is not relevant to the laws you referenced.
If we're going to take the Post metaphor so seriously; presumably if it's in your inbox - but clearly not for you; then you cannot open it since 'Post cannot be opened if someone knows or reasonably suspects the post has been incorrectly delivered.'.
However, of course, if you aren't sure if it is for you; then that would likely be a 'reasonable excuse' to open it under the law.
Presumably once you have opened it and realised it is not for you, you would follow the boilerplate and delete the message.
Seriously, I'm not condoning that these laws should apply to email - but if we are going to make a comparison, at least get your facts right.
If they addressed it to me i'm pretty sure it does - or am I supposed to use magical powers to determine I should open that piece of mail with my name and my address on it?
This is not "Bob Smith at 12 Station St" getting mail addressed to "Bill Jones at 14 Station St" It is not even "Bob Smith at 12 Station St" getting mail addressed to "Bill Jones at 12 Station St". This is "Bob Smith at 12 Station St" getting mail addressed to "Bob Smith at 12 Station St".
Sure the sender screwed up an actually meant to send it to Bill, but are you seriously saying Bob is going to be breaking the law by opening it.
And that could happen with physical mail - it's not such a stretch to put the a letter in the wrong envelope. I'm sure someone somewhere has sent TIm's wedding invitation to Jane because they screwed up when putting 200 personalised invites into 200 addressed envelopes. Or a letter printer and envelope printer got out of sync in some automated setup.
You've made a few errors there. This is "12 Staton St" getting mail addressed to "Bob Smith at 12 Station St". It would be unfortunate in the postal system if the a duplicate name lived at the mistaken address. If there is a "Bob Smith" at the real address, it's unlikely, but surely it would be a "Reasonable Excuse" - as defined in the law you replied to.
However, in this case, the fake "Bob Smith" has set up a house called "12 Staton St" and hoping people get the wrong address; and he isn't really even called "Bob Smith" at all. That's why the law states: "know or suspect to have been delivered incorrectly".
The original argument from 'bmo' was "You get something unsolicited, and you are free to do with it whatever you choose. It's up to the sender to get the address right in all cases." - that's not the case for post in the UK.
However - what works in the real world shouldn't always apply on the Internet...
No, not really. If you're a BCC'd recipient you wouldn't even be able to tell from the headers. All you'd see is a delivered-to header and obviously that has to be you since you received it. It's the RCPT TO field that determines who actually receives the e-mail, not the To, Cc, or Bcc headers (the Bcc header is stripped out anyway).
Yes, BCC is another reason why the original comparison (from 'bmo') to post vs email is not a fair comparison; and why the laws (that really do exist in the UK) shouldn't apply to email.
I should reasonably suspect her messages are not for me. I do get mail from people I don't know, it is rare but it does happen. I do not have any reason to assume any e-mail was not intended for me until I have opened the message and seen it's contents.
In the case of the post (not that I believe it should apply, just that's what we're talking here); if the letter was addressed to your name and the address was incorrect, it would be a simple case of mistaken identity, and although probably illegal somehow - I'm sure it wouldn't be enforced.
If you'd set up aple.com for the deliberate purpose of fraud, (like those in the article have) then you can "reasonably suspect the post has been incorrectly delivered".
Email doesn't follow most of the postal rules because of the relative infallibility of machines, thus most postal privacy laws don't apply.
You're right - I agree entirely. But I wasn't the one who compared the email with postal services;
I simply took issue with 'bmo' comparing the two when there ARE laws in the UK about opening post not to the addressee.
I don't even believe the postal laws should apply to email; I believe the law should only come into effect where it's clear the 'typosquatted' domain is there for fraud.
A person commits an offence if, intending to act to a person's detriment and without reasonable excuse, opens a postal packet which they know or suspect to have been delivered incorrectly.
But it was delivered completely correctly. The sender specified the wrong address, but it was delivered absolutely correctly to that address.
As others have pointed out, delivered!=addressed.
i.e. just because my bank sent my bank statement to your house by accident, that does not give you the right to read or open it (at least not via post in the UK)
So...what you're saying is that I could not open or throw away mail that is addressed to someone that does not live in my house, yet has my address on it?
Pretty soon, I'm going to be crushed under the weight of all the mail addresses to "homeowner" or "recipient"!
Or, am i expected to find out where this person is, and do the Post's job for them? (fat chance).
If you're the homeowner or recipient, then you are the addressee... no need to be facetious.
If it has someone elses name on it, no you cannot legally open it, at least by the law of the UK.
If you set up a similarly named address, for the sole purpose of intercepting mail, then I would expect that yes, you're still breaking the law.
It is an offence to open, destroy, hide or delay any post that is addressed to someone else.
Post cannot be opened if it is to the addressee's detriment and without reasonable excuse.
Reasonable excuse is not defined by the Act.
An example of a potential conflict is if a landlord opens a previous tenant's post in order to trace them.
Post cannot be opened if someone knows or reasonably suspects the post has been incorrectly delivered.
It is also an offence to divert someone's post in order to intentionally delay them from receiving it. An example of this could be where a person re-posts documents or cheques to delay the addressee from acting upon them.
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This is why I'm still on Windows XP; I like the Start Menu and being able to group my applications by purpose in a *menu*.
I don't want them littered over the desktop or in silly toolbars.
The parent post is from Alex Belits, a jobless Linux astroturfer. Last time he submitted his resume to anyone was when he tried to be Linus Torvalds bootlicker and was turned down for drool.
See how nicely that fits there loony tunes? Oh and I'm not working for anyone but myself, I am your worst nightmare...I'm a retailer. you see we have tried your product and found your bullshit and lies to be just that so maybe you'd like me to enlighten some of the masses, hmm?,
Isn't it sad, how like a frightened child afraid to look under the bed, you cower at the truth? if your driver model isn't shit then why does Dell have to run their own repos even though we are talking a teeny tiny subset of hardware? Oh right because Linux shits itself and dies if you use the default repos! Man that is some excellent product you got there! Bleeding yet douchey? want some more? nice thing about having the truth on your side, you can keep throwing punches all day! How about how a decade old Windows beat the shit out of Linux on netbooks or how ASUS has given up on your bullshit or how about Walmart running away from linux as fast as it can? You got the crazy koolaid drunk enough to say they ALL are paid shills because they won't do your forum dance or CLI horseshit? Meanwhile your "hero" Torvalds the great says Plans? We don't need no steenkin plans!. Why don't you tell them that at work next week, see how quick you get a pink slip? More? How about you actually have the balls to celebrate getting a whole 1% market share while you are actually lower than JavaME and there is a whole website dedicated To your bullshit and excuses.
Meanwhile i'll go back to enjoying my nice new Asus EEE Windows 7 HP netbook, which I got myself as a little prezzie with some of the profits I made from NOT carrying an inferior product. If you don't like being last? Try putting out a product worth actually stocking. You know what you remind me of? A religious nutball. When someone points out a hole in your dogma you go "La la la, it can't be true! U must be a M$ Ninja!" while we all laugh at your batshit insanity. But hey friend here is a nice video of your hero RMS showing why he is the great one so that should cheer you up.
Nice try, Ballmer.
In no way does gaysex spread your genes as widely as possible. It may spread your jeans, though.
Your face when you realise you're the only person who's brought up 'gay sex'...
In the US there has been one known HIV transmission through blood transfusion in the last 8 years the chances of getting HIV from a blood transfusion are 1 in 1,500,000. 1 in 400 people who get stuck with a needle or cut with a sharp from a person with HIV contract the virus there have been 57 cases of health care workers getting HIV at work there are 12,000,000 health care workers. Getting HIV is not that easy mostly bad decisions have to be made to get HIV. The chances that you get HIV from a source besides sex and sharing needles is too small to consider 0.000002% you have a better chance of dieing from constipation.
So, still not 100% then?
My understanding is the Terminal Services (a.k.a. RDP) support is part of the proprietary plugin; the version most distros have in their repositories has VNC support enabled. AFAIK it is a compile time switch in the OSE version.
Try typing VBoxHeadless --help and see if any VNC options are listed.
I have one system (at home) that is running the OSE version from the Ubuntu VirtualBox PPA, and it definitely supports VNC.
You're absolutely right - app-emulation/virtualbox has support for VNC, app-emulation/virtualbox-bin has RDP.
I had no idea VBox supported VNC. Thanks again, that'll save me a few headaches!
My understanding is the Terminal Services (a.k.a. RDP) support is part of the proprietary plugin; the version most distros have in their repositories has VNC support enabled. AFAIK it is a compile time switch in the OSE version.
Try typing VBoxHeadless --help and see if any VNC options are listed.
I have one system (at home) that is running the OSE version from the Ubuntu VirtualBox PPA, and it definitely supports VNC.
Brilliant! Thanks for the tip, will give it a go.
USB in guests still works fine for me (well maybe "fine" is too strong of a word... let's just say it didn't seem to get any worse when they switched to the plugin architecture). I run a Ubuntu 10.04 host with Windows and Linux guests of various flavors, so YMMV if your setup is different.
The minor weirdness I've noticed is that the Open Source binaries which are available on their site (without the plugin) have no remote console capability, even though the OSE version available on most Linux distros has a built-in VNC console server. So they effectively still have two separate versions...
I've been using the binary version (via Gentoo) of VirtualBox, and it "supports" Terminal Services for connecting to the console. Never works of course.
Are you implying that the compiled version has VNC instead? If so, I'll start recompiling right now - I don't see why they chose Terminal Services for connecting to one instance...
Either you can't be bothered to edit the configuration file, or you don't care about your data still being there tomorrow.
So if I don't edit the configuration file, PostgreSQL will delete all my data? Fantastic!
Judging by the comments on TPB page, they did fuck with it:
The pirated version of the game a buggy as hell, and everyone is pirate themed, which I have a feeling is intended.
Who knows? It might be the original that's buggy and the torrent shows quite how badly written it is.
(in fact, nowhere does it mention that the pirated game has extra bugs, so it's likely that this is true)
It would be unusual for a torrented game to be worse and more freedom-restricting than actually paying for it.
Ok,ok. It's not that I'm suggesting this new idea is a bad one; just that it is a novelty and I can't see it being profitable for EA to put pirate hats on all of the Sims.
I would like to note that it state opened. Since an e-mail is data it can be read directly without being 'opened'. The only protection that is available to them is if it's encrypted. Here in the us that would make it illegal to decrypt under the DMCA, with a few exceptions. I believe the EU has a similar law that would protect encrypted e-mails as well.
That's irrelevant - the original post was about applying the postal laws to email. If these domain squatters 'knows or reasonably suspects the post has been incorrectly delivered'; then if we were to apply these laws to domains and email - it would be illegal. Encryption is entirely irrelevant.
And in fact "typosquatting" does happen in the UK with real physical mail and it is not illegal.
One of the obsolete UK railway companies ceased to legally exist. Making it possible to create a new company named that. Somebody did so, presumably intending to some day create merchandise which would legally use this significant name, which would have some cachet in the hobbyist market, but wouldn't cause any real confusion.
But instead they got piles of mail intended for whatever railway company was currently responsible for this or that problem somewhere in the country. Demands for payment of utility bills, requests for authority to dig things up, and so on. They opened these letters, and they wrote very caustic replies, pointing out the foolishness of sending letters to a company based on the fact that it has the same name as a company which was at some previous time responsible for something.
After a while they got threatening legal letters, and they began writing back to the client (not the lawyer) pointing out that a lawyer who can't even send their threatening letters to the right people is maybe not worth hiring. This resulted in even more useless threatening legal letters.
I'm fairly sure I've heard of this. But this new company wasn't deliberately set up for confusion; and it has no other running company to be confused with. If the company name or addressee is the same, it would be difficult for them to know it was a misdelivered package.
Its not relevant whether it was delivered to the right box; because the law clearly states "without reasonable excuse, opens a postal packet which they know or suspect to have been delivered incorrectly".
That is, unless you can think of a way of ensuring post is misdelivered to you, whilst making sure you never even begin to suspect that it wasn't meant to be delivered to you.
My reply was meant to be a poke at the lack of knowledge surrounding the postal system (the OP was misinformed over the law), and how these laws cannot be related to email. However, if you want to apply them - you can't simply interpret them how you want. This thread has taken it way too seriously and completely missed the point.
I was only respinding to this part:
just because my bank sent my bank statement to your house by accident, that does not give you the right to read or open it (at least not via post in the UK)
Which has nothing to do with email and domain squatting and so on.
If my name is Bill Smith and I live at 12 Station St and your bank decides to send your bank statement to me addressed as:
Bill Smith 12 Station St.
Then surely it can not be against the law for me open the letter? How do I know it isn't for me before I open it?
That's what I'm saying - if my name is Bill Smith and you cannot possibly "know or suspect to have been delivered incorrectly", then surely you opening it to find out would be considered a "reasonable excuse" under the law, no?
Well the servers arn't making the mistake...
I'm sure it's not the customers' mistake when the bank sends their statement to the wrong address.
That doesn't mean you can legally open it if it's clear you "know or suspect to have been delivered incorrectly" under the UK postal law.
The law doesn't explain what those indications might be, but if we're going to apply the UK postal law to email; these are considerations that should be made.
WTFety-F? How can an email be delivered to a person other than the recipient? The recipient is exactly who the email was delivered to, that's the very definition. I'll spare you further embarrassment and presume you meant 'intended recipient' - but in that case, how can the *actual* recipient know what was going through the mind of the sender, based solely on the fact that the email APPEARED IN HIS OR HER MAILBOX?
Seriously? I was making a comparison to the post office; because that's how the conversation started. Go back to the beginning of the thread and you might not feel so angry.
For example, if this were to apply to the mail; if for example you have a wildcarded email, and you receive that is not addressed to your normal email address and with a different name would imply that it is not for you. Thankfully there is a fairly clear part of the law that speaks of "reasonable excuse". An identical name or insufficient information would be an example of this.
However, setting up a fake domain name that is similarly named to another, under the UK law, you could be fairly sure that you "reasonably suspect the post has been incorrectly delivered" and therefore opening it (under the UK law) would be illegal...
I'm not saying I agree with the law; but BMO (above) said "You get something unsolicited, and you are free to do with it whatever you choose. It's up to the sender to get the address right in all cases." - that's not true under the UK law. If you receive a bank statement with someone else's name on it, it almost certainly wouldn't be lawful to open it.
Hope we're clear on that now.
While I'll agree the 'envelope' was correct - it was delivered to the correct address; the person who it was delivered to was not the recipient.
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
By definition, if something is addressed to you and you get it, then you are the "recipient". It does not matter what the thing is that you received, or why you received it. And, even the UK law you quote agrees with this definition, and gives only examples of when the mail is "addressed to someone else". This law is the US is similar. For example, the Post Office even made ads about how receiving something by mail that you did not request doesn't make you obligated to pay for it, because scammers were sending unrequested items via the mail and enclosing bills, then suing for non-payment.
That's irrelevant. I can't (literally nor legally) start a fake company with the same address as another, without it being unlawful to open their post.
I.e. it may have been delivered to your letterbox, but that doesn't mean you can legally open a letter from the bank that's addressed to your parents from the comfort of your basement.
You don't seem to want to acknowledge the difference between incorrectly delivered and incorrectly addressed. If someone puts my address in the To field and it arrives in my inbox then it was correctly delivered. Whether they intended for me to receive the email or not is not relevant to the laws you referenced.
If we're going to take the Post metaphor so seriously; presumably if it's in your inbox - but clearly not for you; then you cannot open it since 'Post cannot be opened if someone knows or reasonably suspects the post has been incorrectly delivered.'.
However, of course, if you aren't sure if it is for you; then that would likely be a 'reasonable excuse' to open it under the law.
Presumably once you have opened it and realised it is not for you, you would follow the boilerplate and delete the message.
Seriously, I'm not condoning that these laws should apply to email - but if we are going to make a comparison, at least get your facts right.
If they addressed it to me i'm pretty sure it does - or am I supposed to use magical powers to determine I should open that piece of mail with my name and my address on it?
This is not "Bob Smith at 12 Station St" getting mail addressed to "Bill Jones at 14 Station St" It is not even "Bob Smith at 12 Station St" getting mail addressed to "Bill Jones at 12 Station St". This is "Bob Smith at 12 Station St" getting mail addressed to "Bob Smith at 12 Station St".
Sure the sender screwed up an actually meant to send it to Bill, but are you seriously saying Bob is going to be breaking the law by opening it.
And that could happen with physical mail - it's not such a stretch to put the a letter in the wrong envelope. I'm sure someone somewhere has sent TIm's wedding invitation to Jane because they screwed up when putting 200 personalised invites into 200 addressed envelopes. Or a letter printer and envelope printer got out of sync in some automated setup.
You've made a few errors there. This is "12 Staton St" getting mail addressed to "Bob Smith at 12 Station St". It would be unfortunate in the postal system if the a duplicate name lived at the mistaken address. If there is a "Bob Smith" at the real address, it's unlikely, but surely it would be a "Reasonable Excuse" - as defined in the law you replied to.
However, in this case, the fake "Bob Smith" has set up a house called "12 Staton St" and hoping people get the wrong address; and he isn't really even called "Bob Smith" at all. That's why the law states: "know or suspect to have been delivered incorrectly".
The original argument from 'bmo' was "You get something unsolicited, and you are free to do with it whatever you choose. It's up to the sender to get the address right in all cases." - that's not the case for post in the UK.
However - what works in the real world shouldn't always apply on the Internet...
If it has my address on it, how am I even supposed to know it's not for me before I open it?
Do you not have a name, Chris Mattern? =)
No, not really. If you're a BCC'd recipient you wouldn't even be able to tell from the headers. All you'd see is a delivered-to header and obviously that has to be you since you received it. It's the RCPT TO field that determines who actually receives the e-mail, not the To, Cc, or Bcc headers (the Bcc header is stripped out anyway).
Yes, BCC is another reason why the original comparison (from 'bmo') to post vs email is not a fair comparison; and why the laws (that really do exist in the UK) shouldn't apply to email.
I should reasonably suspect her messages are not for me. I do get mail from people I don't know, it is rare but it does happen. I do not have any reason to assume any e-mail was not intended for me until I have opened the message and seen it's contents.
In the case of the post (not that I believe it should apply, just that's what we're talking here); if the letter was addressed to your name and the address was incorrect, it would be a simple case of mistaken identity, and although probably illegal somehow - I'm sure it wouldn't be enforced.
If you'd set up aple.com for the deliberate purpose of fraud, (like those in the article have) then you can "reasonably suspect the post has been incorrectly delivered".
Email doesn't follow most of the postal rules because of the relative infallibility of machines, thus most postal privacy laws don't apply.
You're right - I agree entirely. But I wasn't the one who compared the email with postal services;
I simply took issue with 'bmo' comparing the two when there ARE laws in the UK about opening post not to the addressee.
I don't even believe the postal laws should apply to email; I believe the law should only come into effect where it's clear the 'typosquatted' domain is there for fraud.
But it was delivered completely correctly. The sender specified the wrong address, but it was delivered absolutely correctly to that address.
As others have pointed out, delivered!=addressed.
i.e. just because my bank sent my bank statement to your house by accident, that does not give you the right to read or open it (at least not via post in the UK)
So...what you're saying is that I could not open or throw away mail that is addressed to someone that does not live in my house, yet has my address on it? Pretty soon, I'm going to be crushed under the weight of all the mail addresses to "homeowner" or "recipient"!
Or, am i expected to find out where this person is, and do the Post's job for them? (fat chance).
If you're the homeowner or recipient, then you are the addressee... no need to be facetious.
If it has someone elses name on it, no you cannot legally open it, at least by the law of the UK.
If you set up a similarly named address, for the sole purpose of intercepting mail, then I would expect that yes, you're still breaking the law.
You have to "open" email, just to see who it's sent too.OOPS. TOO LATE.
No, at least in theory, you don't. SMTP literally has an "envelope"; it should be all the server looks at to relay/deliver messages.
"Delivered incorrectly" is different from "addressed incorrectly". One is an error of the Postal Service, the other is an error of the sender.
Either way, as confirmed in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000:
It is an offence to open, destroy, hide or delay any post that is addressed to someone else. Post cannot be opened if it is to the addressee's detriment and without reasonable excuse. Reasonable excuse is not defined by the Act.
An example of a potential conflict is if a landlord opens a previous tenant's post in order to trace them. Post cannot be opened if someone knows or reasonably suspects the post has been incorrectly delivered.
It is also an offence to divert someone's post in order to intentionally delay them from receiving it. An example of this could be where a person re-posts documents or cheques to delay the addressee from acting upon them.