Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!sharkey!emv From: emv@a.cc.umich.edu (Ed Vielmetti) Newsgroups: news.misc Subject: Re: Anti-Semitism (Jew-hatred) on the network. What should be done? Message-ID: <2364@mailgw.cc.umich.edu> Date: 1 Dec 88 02:14:33 GMT References: <1748YZKCU@CUNYVM> <275@acheron.UUCP> <1756AIPBH@CUNYVM> Reply-To: emv@mailgw.cc.umich.edu (Ed Vielmetti) Followup-To: news.misc Organization: University of Michigan Computing Center, Ann Arbor Lines: 31 In any sufficiently large group of people you are going to have some who don't take email seriously. An apporpriate way of dealing with problems like this (harassment by mail of any sort) is to inform people who care enough and who have the power enough to deal with these events on a local level. Who should you contact? If the harassing mail has passed through a number of relay sites (like a bitnet gateway or several uucp hops) then it's quite reasonable to inform the postmasters of the sites along the way. They may be able to check their logs and confirm that the traffic actually moved through their systems. Once that avenue is exhausted, look to the technical and administrative contacts for the site (available from the NIC whois server, doubtless some bitnet service, the usenet maps, or via your campus NSF contact if you're on a campus). Try to isolate all of the services which passed along the offending mail, and let the person responsible for providing the service know that you are not pleased that it is carrying such harassing mail. It is important to be selective in your escalations. Keep a record of your outgoing mail and track who is helpful and who isn't. In general, posting this sort of stuff to the entire usenet is going to be less effective than selectively finding the person or persons who will be offending that this kind of garbage is being transmitted over equipment that they run and pay for. Identify people who take mail seriously and who are directly responsible, that's key. It's close to impossible to generate any sort of mass action from the entire usenet, so if you are seeking an effective end to the problem it's much more productive to focus your attack.