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How about making sure that valid e-mail accounts

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by hal 9000

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Are active when someone joins TR? I've just received a message through the Peer Link and I can not reply to it as I keep getting the message that the e-mail that I send is

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Hi. This is the qmail-send program at gizmo12ps.bigpond.com.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses. ******************
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

206.47.199.31 does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 550 Invalid recipient:
Giving up on 206.47.199.31.
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Now I seem to some how upset this person and got a very brief response from them along the lines of
Subject:- loser
Contents:- you a shmuck

While I'm not the slightest bit concerned about this as the person is either very young or doesn't use English as a first language when I tried to respond all I got was the above error message which I've removed the supplied e-mail address from but it does leave the possibility open that someone can join TR and then proceed to reek havoc but not really be serious about their participation.

Now there is the possibility of not being contactable through the Peer Directory which to me is quite acceptable but this not being even a valid e-mail account makes me wonder if this person is really interested in being with TR for anything at all other than to create problems.

I've certainly been called a lot worse and I really do not care one iota about this persons feelings about me but the fact that he/she is un-contactable does worry me to a certain extent as I for one do not want to see TR turned into a personal attack place where we no longer get to participate with if nothing else IT Professionals and attempt to help each other out when possible.

Has anyone had a similar experience or comments on this?

Col

4 replies

by house

This reinforces my comment in the "Wild Tech Q&A Idea" thread at the bottom of my post here - https://www.techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=95&threadID=163716&messageID=1684082.

I've allowed peers to contact me, and have received an email that made little or no sense. I can't remember the context of the question, but it did appear to be a cry for help regarding an actual tech issue. When I attempted to contact the person though, I received a rejection notice telling me that the account doesn't exist.

I can't remember if, when you register, you need to receive and respond to an email from TR in order to activate your account. If this is not the case, then perhaps we should look at this as well.

by smorty71

House:
We do confirm e-mail addresses of new members; however, that hasn't always been the case. So if the user registered before we started confirming addresses, then this type of problem can occur.

Perhaps we could implement some sort of check before a member sends a message. If they never confirmed their e-mail address, we could ask them to do it before they can send the message.

by bfilmfan

I often get email from peers with congrats or derogatory commetns. When they use yiddish to insult, being Jewish, I have a larger vocabulary to use back on them when they call me a shmuck...haha.

Frankly, I pay about as much attention to it as I do to the comments from other public forums. I still get to ride home in the jag, the top down, Florida sunshine, radio on blaring Beach Boy tunes and looking at ladies in shorts and bikinis. Man ain't life good?

by hal 9000

But the real problem is that there was no way to contact this particular person to find out what they where on about.

Personally I'm not the slightest bit concerned other than the fact that this e-mail account could end up getting blogged with heaps of junk mail sent by someone who wants to abuse the system and adversely affect TR.

It would be a simple thing to just change an e-mail address from my point of view but the average Peer here might tend to think that this type of thing is part and parcel of being a member and just walk away which would be a sad thing.

Col

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