FC: Neil Gaiman on the risks of unintelligent email filtering

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

---

Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 14:27:11 -0800
To: declan () well com
From: Ron Avitzur <avitzur () PacificT com>
Subject: risks of automated email filtering

I saw this on Neil Gaiman's online journal. It's a well-known old RISK, but
I found the particular context rather funny:

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/journal.asp

> For several months e-mails to DC Comics would randomly not get
> there. There seemed to be no unifying factor -- I'd send them from
> different e-mail accounts, to different editors and to other
> staffers, at different times. Some of the e-mails would simply never
> get there. Recently Dave McKean sent a cover sketch to me and to the
> DC folk and copied it to me. I got it, they didn't. This was way
> beyond bizarre, and very discouraging. I mean, if all of the e-mails
> didn't get through, one wouldn't care, but randomly not knowing why
> an e-mail would arrive at the other end or not... it made one want
> to bang one's head against a wall. And AOLTimeWarner's computer
> people were no help at all.
>
> Tonight, an editor at DC copied me on an e-mail she'd received from
> their computer people (about why an email took a very long time to
> get to her) that may go some way to explaining the problem....
> And I quote:
>
> > I've been informed that the reason why there was a delay in the
> > delivery of this message was because one of several keywords were
> > found within the message. In particular, the word "SANDMAN" was
> > found several times. This has been a telltale sign of one or more
> > computer viruses, so the message was set aside to be investigated by
> > a WB security person.
>
> I'd be willing to bet that every message I sent them that didn't get
> through had the word SANDMAN in it. And that instead of reviewing
> them, the emails were simply automatically deleted as probable
> viruses. SANDMAN.... found several times... dead giveaway really....
>
> Amused sigh. Good night.
> posted by Neil Gaiman 12:57 AM





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