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Bug#340624: ITP: sendcard -- web-based virtual greeting card (e-card) software



On Friday 25 November 2005 11:10, Steve Greenland wrote:
> On 25-Nov-05, 11:55 (CST), "Wesley J. Landaker" <wjl@icecavern.net> wrote:
> > Okay, be honest: when was the last time you actually got *spam* sent by
> > a 3rd party through an e-card service?
>
> Any e-card I get is spam. When was the last time you got an e-card
> you actually *wanted*? Okay, maybe "Unsolicited Crap E-mail" is more
> correct, but it's still UCE.

Okay, so not UCE or really spam at all, just e-mail you don't like, but 
someone you know wanted to send it to you. Kind of like when a non-geeky 
aquaintance forwards you stupid poems or jokes. Or an uninteresting 
relative keeps sending you newsletters and links to their baby picture 
site. I guess you could call any of those "spam" in a colloquial sense.

Yeah, that's annoying (and apparently you are against the idea of e-cards in 
general) but if sent manually by humans, they are hardly UCE and not what 
most technical people mean when they say "spam". The easiest way to stop 
that kind of behavior is to ask those people, whom you know, to stop. If 
you are getting real spam through an e-card service from a 3rd party 
company or "Nigerian" scammers, I'd be interested to hear about it so that 
I could avoid having this problem with sendcard.

Sendcard has the advantage in this situation, as there is a built in way to 
say either "don't let this person send e-cards to me anymore", or even 
"don't EVER send me an e-card again". It could probably be improved. In 
fact, in the Debian version of sendcard I will be applying several patches 
that help avoid abuse and increase security. In addition, the default 
settings will only allow sending from localnets unless manually changed by 
the admin. Sendcard also has support for limiting the rate that cards are 
sent to avoid bots and such--this will be on by default in the Debian 
version. 

Anyway, if you have real concerns about e.g. vulnerabilities in sendcard in 
particular, or ideas about improving the software to reduce the chance of 
it being used for spam, I'd be happy to both hear about and--if 
feasible--implement them.

Well, to answer your question, I hate most e-cards too; usually they are 
incredibly lame. That's why I run my own non-lame e-card site, from where I 
get lovely e-cards all the time from family and friends. =)

-- 
Wesley J. Landaker <wjl@icecavern.net> <xmpp:wjl@icecavern.net>
OpenPGP FP: 4135 2A3B 4726 ACC5 9094  0097 F0A9 8A4C 4CD6 E3D2

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