I’m having nightmares sending mail to a friend in Oz at the moment. The Email Nazis at her workplace recently installed a mail filter that blocks certain incoming messages. To start with it’s language, but will soon also exclude images and other media attachments. This will be fun as part of her job is developing their intranet web pages.
Of course, these little SS men of the online world don’t actually think of their users before implementing their new software. They basically have nothing else to do. Have you ever had any joy with your internal systems people in a large office environment when the printer dies, or smoke starts coming from the back of your monitor? Of course not. They’re far too busy justifying the departmental budget by installing spyware and tweaking the Quake server so they can manage a few extra frags over lunch.
The most annoying thing with the software they’re using, or the setup they’ve gone for, is that if one of my mails doesn’t get there I don’t get told. Sometimes she does, but I – as the mailer – live in darkness. It used to tell me. Then it did sometimes. Now it doesn’t. I have to wait for a mail saying “I got a bounce message from your last mail” or “I’ve not heard from you in three days – did you reply?”
Very helpful.
Mind you, at least it doesn’t give falso positives. For instance, I have come across mail filtering and bulletin board filtering that won’t allow users to post comments about Scunthorpe or Lightwater Valley. Look closely and you’ll see why.
On the other hand, being Australian, I’m amazed it clamps down on the word “arse”. Also, like most other filters it also rejects genuine, proper words like “penis”. Admittedly, why you’d be emailing someone in a council housing office to discuss your genitals is beyond me.
Incidentally, as a passive aside – on the London Underground on the same day I saw posters for “Puppetry of the Penis” on DVD/VHS and “The Vagina Monologues” on stage somewhere. “Penis” was blacked out, while “Vagina” was in lovely gold 3-inch high letters. Explain, please?
Anyway, back to mail filtering. The best/worst example I’ve seen belongs to another mate’s employer around Bradford somewhere. It does send you bounce messages, but they’re wholey ill-advised and it picks up (badly) on words with alternative meanings.
WARNING: RUDE BIT AHEAD
It seems to group words into categories. If you send a mail with the word “****” in, then you get one back saying “this mail hasn’t been delivered as it has one of the following words in: ****, shag…” and so forth. Now this is fine if you’ve sent a mail with a genuine four-letter word embedded in it.
Remember I mentioned false positives? Well, suppose little Emily at school visits a farm for the day. And writes daddy an email at work about the animals. Like the big cock she saw, crowing at the pigs. And the pussy that was suckling it’s kittens.
Little Emily will get back an email saying that her message to daddy bounced (“aaaaw”) because her message contained one of the following words: Cock, pussy, penis, vagina, ****, fanny. All those nice words delivered to her little 7 year-old inbox. Lovely.
You’re buggered if you’re name’s Fanny and you sign it at the bottom of your emails, too. I did try to email them back to make this point, but as I included the foul-mouthed email they had sent me, it was bounced. And I got more filth in my mailbox.
So I set about attempting to see how many categories they divided the words into, what words it tripped up on, what slipped through and how I could disguise them.
It was about this time that my email address was refused on any and all incoming mail. Oops.
