[risks] Risks Digest 22.79

From: RISKS List Owner (riskoat_private)
Date: Tue Jul 08 2003 - 09:25:14 PDT

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    RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest  Tuesday 8 July 2003  Volume 22 : Issue 79
    
       FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks)
       ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G. Neumann, moderator
    
    ***** See last item for further information, disclaimers, caveats, etc. *****
    This issue is archived at http://www.risks.org as
      http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.79.html
    The current issue can be found at
      http://www.csl.sri.com/users/risko/risks.txt
    
      Contents:
    The risks of assuming things: German payrolls (Debora Weber-Wulff)
    Radar operator's joke leads to fighter intercept (Ian Chard)
    "Soft walls" will keep hijacked planes at bay (Chris Meadows,
      Craig DeForest)
    Error in E-Mini Dow Futures creates havoc at CBOT, CME (Conrad Heiney)
    $180 Million for Piracy Conspiracy (Monty Solomon)
    Computer failure brings Hong Kong passenger to Melbourne (David Goll)
    Dead-pregnant-men software failure (Ed Ravin)
    Johnson Calls ATM Arrest Error 'Intolerable' (Keith A Rhodes)
    RFID Site Security Gaffe Uncovered by Consumer Group (Monty Solomon)
    Web site turns tables on government officials (Monty Solomon)
    FTC Increases Focus on Privacy (Bob Tedeschi via Monty Solomon)
    Web vandalism alert (NewsScan)
    Re: Cell-phone tracking (Thor Lancelot Simon)
    Microsoft Word "bytes" Tony Blair in the butt (Richard M. Smith)
    Dangers of MS Word, yet again (David Magda)
    New variant on the PayPal scam (Dawn Cohen)
    Re: Phantom voting in Israeli Knesset (Jonathan Kamens)
    Watch out for auto-dialing on cellphones (Danny Burstein)
    Glitches hit FTC 'do-not-call' list (Monty Solomon)
    Do not do not call? (Dawn Cohen)
    Risk of appropriating technology you don't understand (Doug Sojourner)
    About Do-Not-Call ListsMark Siegel (Mark Siegel)
    Re: New State Laws on Privacy (Don Colton)
    Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)
    
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2003 23:08:26 +0200
    From: Debora Weber-Wulff <weberwu@fhtw-berlin.de>
    Subject: The risks of assuming things: German payrolls
    
    The German government has a little problem. Up until now all of the
    civil servants have been paid according to a pay scale that is the
    same throughout Germany.  The salaries are paid out by the states, but
    the federal government determines the pay level. The company SAP has
    developed payroll software for the civil service that many states in
    German use.  When a new payscale goes into effect, they just issue a
    table update, and everything is fine.
    
    Now suddenly the states are rebelling: Berlin has left the fold, and
    just this week concocted a wacky payment system. Certain extras are
    being cut, others kept, pay is being cut either 8, 10 or 12 percent
    depending on what scale people are in, the work week is to be
    decreased by 2 hours a week for most of them, etc. etc. No one really
    understands it, except that Berlin is broke and is trying to save
    money any way it can. The changes are to go into effect immediately -
    except that there's the slight problem with the payroll system. It
    assumes the same tariffs as everywhere.....
    
    Looks like the folks down at SAP are going to have their vacations
    canceled, as they try to whip up programs to institute this payment
    schedule change.
    
    Or as a colleague once said many, many years ago: No one can be *that*
    crazy....  only to discover a few months later that there really was
    someone with a really crazy schema for organizing stuff.
    
    Prof. Dr. Debora Weber-Wulff, FHTW Berlin, FB 4, Internationale
    Medieninformatik Treskowallee 8, 10313 Berlin  +49-30-5019-2320
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 15:27:41 +0100
    From: "Ian Chard" <ichardat_private>
    Subject: Radar operator's joke leads to fighter intercept
    
    Avweb Newswire
    (http://www.avweb.com/newswire/9_27b/complete/185253-1.html):
    
    "In Europe last week, French fighter jets almost shot down a civilian
    helicopter that wandered over Lake Geneva, after a Swiss controller
    jokingly labelled the helicopter as 'al-Qaeda' on his radar screen."
    
    Ian Chard  RHCE  Unix systems administrator      E: ichardat_private
    European IT, Cadence Design Systems Ltd          T: +44 (0)1506 595019
    The Alba Campus, Livingston, Scotland  EH54 7HH  M: +44 (0)7901 855073
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 10:17:29 -0500
    From: Robotech_Master <robotechat_private>
    Subject: "Soft walls" will keep hijacked planes at bay
    
    Article in *NewScientist* about an interesting new technique for
    keeping airliners from crashing into skyscrapers:
      http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993893
    
    The proposal suggests
    
      modifying the avionics in aircraft so that the plane would fight any
      efforts by the pilot to fly into restricted airspace. So if a plane
      was flying with a no-fly-zone to the left, and the pilot started
      banking left to enter the zone, the avionics would counter by banking
      right. Lee's system, called "soft walls", would first gently resist
      the pilot, and then become increasingly forceful until it prevailed.
      The risks of this technique I leave as an exercise to the reader.
    
    Chris Meadows aka Robotech_Master robotechat_private  
    http://www.eyrie.org/~robotech
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2003 13:03:45 -0600
    From: zowieat_private (Craig DeForest)
    Subject: "Soft walls" = dangerous avionics?
    
    Edward Lee, at U.C. Berkeley, is proposing to implement no-fly zones
    around skyscrapers (and avoid a repeat of the 9/11 massacre) by using
    GPS to override the controls of civilian aircraft.  Based on a
    database (in the aircraft) of building locations, the on-board
    avionics would force the controls of large airplanes to prevent them
    from flying into large buildings (with presumably known locations).
    
    There's an interesting article in this week's New Scientist
    (http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993893) that talks
    about Lee's system and relates it to other ideas for counter-
    terrorism.  Interestingly, one advantage that Lee uses is that other
    systems require radio links with the ground and therefore "can be
    jammed, or hacked into" (while, presumably, GPS cannot?).
    
    Not surprisingly, Lee says that pilots are "openly hostile" to the
    idea.
    
    It seems to me that the system falls prey to a weakness that so many
    pseudo-security systems do: it's in essence a cooperative system,
    rather than a pre-emptive one (by analogy to multitasking in the
    computing world).  Even assuming the avionics work flawlessly, it
    would be impossible to install the "soft wall" system on every
    airplane in the country, let alone the world -- and it only takes one
    airplane with the soft-wall avionics missing or disabled, to defeat
    the purpose of the whole system.  
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 14:16:01 -0700
    From: "Conrad Heiney" <conradat_private>
    Subject: Error in E-Mini Dow Futures creates havoc at CBOT, CME
    
    The Wall Street Journal today (7/3/03) reported that a mistaken order on
    the Chicago Board of Trade's "e-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average
    Futures" caused wild market swings today.
    
    Apparently an order to sell 10,000 contracts instead of 100 was put in by
    mistake. This caused the market, which had been on the upswing that day, to
    plunge downwards in both the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago
    Mercantile Exchange. Several traders reported assuming that some bad news
    such as a terrorist attack had sparked the sell-off.
    
    The RISK of a typo on an electronic system causing financial havoc is
    once again made clear.
    
    Conrad Heiney
    conradat_private
    http://fringehead.org
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 23:39:37 -0400
    From: Monty Solomon <montyat_private>
    Subject: $180 Million for Piracy Conspiracy
    
    $180 million at $500 a month, Vickie Chachere, Associated Press, 28 Jun 2003
    
    A man who schemed to steal satellite television signals now has
    something much bigger than a cable bill to pay -- a whopping $180
    million restitution order on which he is to make $500 monthly
    payments.
    http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/orl-locpayback28062803jun28,0,5719929.story
    http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/06/28/181227.shtml
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2003 11:46:04 +1000
    From: David Goll <dgollat_private>
    Subject:  Computer failure brings Hong Kong passenger to Melbourne
    
    From today's *Melbourne Age*:  According to reports on local radio this
    morning, the lady in question was in possession of a branded boarding
    pass which clearly identified her carrier as Cathay Pacific not Qantas.
    One has to question our reliance on technology when even holding a
    branded boarding pass, a passenger can inadvertently walk onto the wrong
    flight and end up not only in a different country, but a different
    hemisphere to boot!
    
    http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/08/1057430177680.html
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2003 01:38:16 -0400
    From: Ed Ravin <eravinat_private>
    Subject: Dead-pregnant-men software failure
    
    In a NY Times story about the effects of NY City budget cuts:
    
      http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/07/nyregion/07BLOC.html?pagewanted=print
    
    (link free until July 13 or so, after that they charge):
    
    Is a discussion of yet another multi-million dollar software
    development failure:
    
     Eight years ago, at the urging of [...] funeral directors, the
     city agreed to develop a computerized registration system [for the
     filing of death certificates].  About $3.2 million was spent to
     design one, according to an audit released on June 23 by the city
     comptroller. Then the plans were abandoned when the prototype system
     developed serious problems, like registering some men as having
     been pregnant when they died. The city now plans to spend $1.8
     million more for project design. The comptroller's audit called
     the aborted plans "a monumental waste" of taxpayer dollars.
    
    The NYC Comptroller's press release announcing the audit is at:
    
     http://www.comptroller.nyc.gov/press/2001_releases/01-08-055.shtm
    
    Where it is mentioned that the city Health Department, in charge of
    the software development, violated both City and State procurement
    procedures in using an existing contract with IBM for "computer
    maintenance" to develop the new software system.  The full bill
    for the system so far is more like $9-$10 million.  The system still
    does not work, and the Health Department has issued a new RFP for
    the project that does not contain any references to the old system,
    so it appears they intend to throw it away.
    
    The audit is available at:
    
     http://www.comptroller.nyc.gov/bureaus/audit/06-23-03_7A03-073.shtm
    
    The Comptroller quickly reaches to the heart of the matter:
    
      "[...] the Department did not employ a formal systems development
      methodology or an independent software quality assurance consultant
      [as required by City rules, which] contributed to the apparent
      failure of this project."
    
    Meanwhile, across the river in New Jersey, a similar project was
    completed by leveraging an existing Sybase system from the New York
    State Department of Health, taking only six months and $250,000.
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 08:25:02 -0400
    From: "Keith A Rhodes" <RhodesKat_private>
    Subject: Johnson Calls ATM Arrest Error 'Intolerable' (Re: RISKS-22.78)
    
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33576-2003Jun25.html
    
    Although this article is focusing more on the local Prince George's
    County police force and detective function -- which has gotten a lot
    of bad press here in the DC area for quite a long time -- I think the
    message that is being missed is that technology can give the exact
    opposite result from that intended. Photographs from ATM cameras
    linked with ATM card usage and the system clocks are supposed to
    provide exact measures of events. However, if the ones using the data
    do not carefully collect it and interpret it correctly, then -- as
    this article states -- three apparently innocent people are arrested
    and held for 22 days. Humans cannot be completely removed from
    processes that have severe consequences, but the humans that are left
    "in the loop" must understand that what they do has severe
    consequences. They should, therefore, be very careful about what the
    "system" is telling them. In this case, the detention of the three
    innocent people has allowed a killer at least 22 days to get away.
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2003 02:08:36 -0400
    From: Monty Solomon <montyat_private>
    Subject: RFID Site Security Gaffe Uncovered by Consumer Group
    
    CASPIAN asks, "How can we trust these people with our personal data?"
    
    CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering)
    says anyone can download revealing documents labeled "confidential"
    from the home page of the MIT Auto-ID Center Web site in two mouse
    clicks.  The Auto-ID Center is the organization entrusted with
    developing a global Internet infrastructure for radio frequency
    identification (RFID). Their plans are to tag all the objects
    manufactured on the planet with RFID chips and track them via the
    Internet.  Privacy advocates are alarmed about the Center's plans
    because RFID technology could enable businesses to collect an
    unprecedented amount of information about consumers' possessions and
    physical movements.  They point out that consumers might not even know
    they're being surveilled since tiny RFID chips can be embedded in
    plastic, sewn into the seams of garments, or otherwise hidden.  ...
      http://www.nocards.org/press/pressrelease07-07-03_1.shtml
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Sat, 5 Jul 2003 00:28:42 -0400
    From: Monty Solomon <montyat_private>
    Subject: Web site turns tables on government officials
    
    Hiawatha Bray, *The Boston Globe*, 4 Jul 2003
    
    Annoyed by the prospect of a massive new federal surveillance system,
    two researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are
    celebrating the Fourth of July with a new Internet service that will
    let citizens create dossiers on government officials.  The system will
    start by offering standard background information on politicians, but
    then go one bold step further, by asking Internet users to submit
    their own intelligence reports on government officials -- reports that
    will be published with no effort to verify their accuracy.  ''It's
    sort of a citizen's intelligence agency,'' said Chris
    Csikszentmihalyi, assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab.  He and
    graduate student Ryan McKinley created the Government Information
    Awareness (GIA) project as a response to the US government's Total
    Information Awareness program (TIA).  ...
    
      http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/185/business/
      Website_turns_tables_on_government_officials+.shtml
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2003 00:28:13 -0400
    From: Monty Solomon <montyat_private>
    Subject: FTC Increases Focus on Privacy
    
    Bob Tedeschi, *The New York Times*, 30 Jun 2003
    
    What started more than a year ago as a California teenager's quest for
    blue jeans ended this month with a warning shot from the Federal Trade
    Commission, which is moving more aggressively against e-tailers seen
    as too lax about protecting their customers' privacy.  Online
    merchants say they can handle the commission's new scrutiny.  But some
    people, including the young man who set off the FTC investigation in
    this case, are not so sure. And given that the young man pointed out a
    security flaw in another well-known online merchant last week, he may
    be right.
    
    In February 2002, Jeremiah Jacks, then a 19-year-old computer
    programmer, was set to buy a pair of jeans on the Web site of Guess
    Inc. But before entering his credit card information, he took the
    unusual step of checking the site's security - not the security pledge
    in Guess.com's privacy policy, but the company's actual practices.  In
    the site's address bar he entered a string of characters that, on an
    insecure site, would produce a page listing the credit card numbers of
    the company's customers. The vulnerability, he said, is well known
    within the programming community.
    
    It worked. About 200,000 customer names and credit card numbers
    appeared in Mr. Jacks's browser. In an interview last week, Mr. Jacks
    recalled that he had immediately tried to inform Guess of its
    vulnerability to such a break-in [an SQL injection].  Guess.com
    ignored his entreaties, he said, and Mr. Jacks soon reported his
    discovery to SecurityFocus, an Internet security news site owned by
    the Symantec Corporation, which then notified Guess. Within hours, the
    company fixed the site.
    
    http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/30/technology/30ECOM.html
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2003 09:30:59 -0700
    From: "NewsScan" <newsscanat_private>
    Subject: Web vandalism alert
    
    Anonymous organizers of a Web-vandalizing contest this weekend say that the 
    goal will be to deface 6,000 Web sites in six hours, with winners to be 
    awarded prizes such as Web hosting space and Internet domain names. Pete 
    Allor of Internet Security Systems Inc., which runs a threat-detection 
    service, cautions Web operators: "The problem is now, and you shouldn't 
    wait until Sunday to address it." (Atlanta Journal-Constitution 3 Jul 2003)
    http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/0703/03hacker.html
    NewsScan Daily, 3 Jul 2003
    
      [Apparently mostly small sites were hit.  PGN]
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: 28 Jun 2003 18:17:21 -0400
    From: tlsat_private (Thor Lancelot Simon)
    Subject: Re: Cell-phone tracking (Lesher, RISKS-22.78)
    
    Knowing which location register (cell-phone networks use, essentially,
    remote procedure call with callbacks between "location registers" to
    authorize outbound calls, correctly route inbound calls, etc.) a phone is
    currently active on, or has recently been active on, is *not* the same as
    knowing where a phone is with GPS precision, nor even the same as knowing
    which cell site a phone is currently speaking to.  Logs of transitions
    between LRs ("roaming", even if that hardly exists from most customers'
    points of view any longer) are useful and probably even necessary for
    diagnosing connectivity and billing problems and for settling accounts among
    providers.
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 09:04:13 -0400
    From: "Richard M. Smith" <rmsat_private>
    Subject: Microsoft Word "bytes" Tony Blair in the butt
    
    Microsoft Word documents are notorious for containing private
    information in file headers which people would sometimes rather not
    share.  The British government of Tony Blair just learned this lesson
    the hard way.
    
    Last week, Alastair Campbell, Blair's Director of Communications and
    Strategy, was in the hot seat in British Parliament hearings
    explaining what roles four of his employees played in the creation of
    a plagiarized dossier on Iraq which the UK government published in
    February 2003.  The names of these four employees were found hidden
    inside of a Microsoft Word file of the Iraq dossier which was posted
    on the 10 Downing Street Web site for use by the press.  The "dodgy
    dossier" as it became known in the British press raised serious
    questions about the quality of British intelligence before the second
    Iraq war.
    
    I wrote an article for my Web site about how a bit computer forensics
    Analysis played a role in this controversy:
    
       http://www.ComputerBytesMan.com/privacy/blair.htm
    
    Richard M. Smith  http://www.ComputerBytesMan.com
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 20:28:52 -0400
    From: David Magda <dmagda+risksat_private>
    Subject: Dangers of MS Word, yet again
    
    The British government learned the hard way about how Microsoft Word
    documents keep a revision history:
    
    http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/feb2003/cnew-f10.shtml
    http://www.computerbytesman.com/privacy/blair.htm
    http://www.abc.net.au/pm/s779254.htm
    
    The original analysis was supposedly this:
    
    http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2003/msg00457.html
    
    This is nothing new of course: see RISKS 20.83, 20.28, 17.76, 19.97,
    18.46, 18.44, 18.41, etc.
    
    This problem goes back to (at least) 1996 (RISKS 17.76) and yet
    people are still bitten by this bug(?).
    
    The more things change...
    
    David Magda <dmagda at ee.ryerson.ca>, http://www.magda.ca/
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2003 09:23:02 -0400
    From: "Dawn Cohen" <COHENDat_private>
    Subject: New variant on the PayPal scam
    
    I don't know exactly what it is about PayPal (as compared with any
    other e-commerce sort of thing)...I seem to get more scam e-mails
    targeting them than anything else, and all of these e-mails seem to
    look very similar.  They all appear to be from PayPal, and include
    HTML forms with legitimate PayPal images and have links with real
    PayPal URL's.  The kicker is always that the submit button takes you
    to a non-PayPal site.
    
    The newest variant is a bit more insidious than the previous ones I've
    received.  The submit button, as usual, takes you to a non-PayPal
    site, but appears to immediately re-direct you to a valid PayPal page.
    You have to either be looking in the page source for the non-PayPal
    URL or be *very* quick to notice that you are going to a non-PayPal
    URL, first.  And even the non-PayPal URL might be a little hard for a
    naive user to catch, assuming they were fast enough to see it:
    
    http://www.paypal.com001110110001101001110001110000111000110100111000111000011100011010pizdatohosting.com/paypal/paypal.php
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2003 16:13:09 -0400
    From: Jonathan Kamens <jikat_private>
    Subject: Re: Phantom voting in Israeli Knesset (Ravin, RISKS 22.76)
    
    It is worth noting that the computerized voting system used by the
    Israeli Knesset has, as far as I know, no security whatsoever.  It
    consists solely of a station of buttons at each Member of Knesset's
    (MK's) seat for him/her to use to register his/her vote.  No
    authentication is required for casting a vote.  All an MK has to do to
    cast someone else's vote is to lean over and push the desired button
    at the other MK's station.
    
    In contrast, the electronic voting stations in the US House of
    Representatives require a "Vote-ID" card to be inserted before a
    Congressman can vote.  Furthermore, there are many fewer stations than
    seats (Congressman line up to vote at the stations), so I suspect that
    the stations all have cameras trained on them throughout each vote,
    such that if there is suspicion of wrong-doing after a vote, it is
    straightforward to replay the video to find out who voted twice.
    
    The US Senate has no electronic voting equipment -- counted votes are
    conducted by roll-call or paper ballot.
    
    This is surely far from the first time that MK's have voted for each
    other.  In fact, I find myself wondering not how this could be allowed
    to happen, but rather why a fuss is being made about this particular
    instance of it.  If the Knesset really wanted to prevent it, they
    could do so, so it seems to me that they haven't seen it as a problem.
    Perhaps the culture within Israel's government is changing, such that
    what was previously acceptable behavior is becoming unacceptable.
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2003 04:20:35 -0400 (EDT)
    From: danny burstein <dannybat_private>
    Subject: Watch out for auto-dialing on cellphones
    
    RISKS has previously pointed out the awkwardness that can result from
    inadvertently tapping an auto-dial button on a cellphone. We now have a
    burgler who will now have quite a bit of spare time to study RISKS.
    
    Per the *NY Post* article, excerpts attached:
    
    "It seems Boylan accidentally hit the redial button on his cell phone
    during a burglary - providing the break-in victim with a voice-mail
    recording of the crime in progress, said Detective Lt. Steve Skrynecki.
    
    "Before the 3:20 a.m. burglary on Sunday, Boylan had called the victim's
    girlfriend on her cell and spoke to the victim, the detective said.
    
    "Somehow, Boylan "inadvertently hit the redial on his cell phone" while he
    and his buddy ransacked the house and chatted as they grabbed a video-game
    player, game cartridges, a remote-controlled car and an antique bayonet,
    Skrynecki said.
    
    "They had no idea their crime-scene commentary was being recorded on the
    girlfriend's voice mail, Skrynecki said.
    
      http://nypost.com/news/regionalnews/2178.htm
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2003 00:47:31 -0400
    From: Monty Solomon <montyat_private>
    Subject: Glitches hit FTC 'do-not-call' list
    
    Nearly one-fourth of the consumers who tried to sign up for the
    Federal Trade Commission's Do Not Call database haven't completed the
    process, the agency said Monday. The agency blames in part a series of
    technological glitches, including aggressive spam filtering by e-mail
    providers that accidentally deleted some confirmation e-mails sent by
    the FTC. But many consumers just haven't replied to the FTC e-mail,
    which is the final step in the sign-up process, said FTC attorney
    Eileen Harrington.  [Source: Bob Sullivan, Three million consumers
    didn't finish sign-up process, MSNBC, 30 Jun 2003]
      http://www.msnbc.com/news/933138.asp
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2003 13:27:04 -0400
    From: "Dawn Cohen" <COHENDat_private>
    Subject: Do not do not call?
    
    I found my way to the Web site for the national Do Not Call registry,
    through the CDT Web site.  
    
    With great cheerfulness, I registered my two phone numbers.  I followed
    the instructions:  I entered my phone numbers and one of my e-mail
    addresses.  I received the automatic e-mails generated by the registry
    Web site, and followed their instructions, which were simply to click on
    a link in the e-mail and print out the confirmation on the linked Web
    page.
    
    "How simple!" thought I to myself.  "What a blessing!  With no effort at
    all, I am relieved of countless nuisance calls that interrupt my
    otherwise hectic dinner!"
    
    "But wait a bit!  How does it know that the e-mail address I entered
    corresponds to someone who legitimately has the rights to put my number
    on the Do Not Call registry?  Oh well...I guess it doesn't
    matter...suppose I go out of my way to take someone else off the
    list...are they going to cry because they don't get a lot of
    telemarketing calls?  I guess not.  No problem!"
    
    "Oh, but wait...I think I saw a 'delete registration' button..."
    
    Yup.  It works the same way.  Type in a phone number and your favorite
    e-mail address, and you can make sure that that number is not on the do
    not call registry!
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 14:51:12 -0700
    From: Doug Sojourner <dsojournerat_private>
    Subject: Risk of appropriating technology you don't understand
    
    Like many other people, I registered at www.donotcall.gov the other
    day. It seems like they are using a "validation" technique that is
    often used for e-mail lists: contact the e-mail given to see if it
    really belongs to the person trying to subscribe.
    
    Alas, this does no good when you contact an e-mail to validate a phone
    number.
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 11:40:09 -0700
    From: Mark Siegel <webat_private>
    Subject: About Do-Not-Call Lists
    
    Assume for a moment, that do not call/do not spam lists are found to be
    invalid/unenforceable/unconstitutional. 'They', now, have all the valid
    e-mail addresses and phone numbers anyone could want.
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 19:07:44 -1000
    From: Don Colton <donat_private>
    Subject: Re: New State Laws on Privacy (RESmith, 22.78)
    
    What are the RISKs of a do-not-call (or do-not-e-mail) list?  How does
    this process work?  Does a telemarketer purchase a copy of the
    do-not-call list, or does the telemarketer submit his own copy and get
    back a list of rejections?  Since conducting surveys is apparently
    still allowed under the new law, will telemarketers use the
    do-not-call list but employ a pseudo-survey marketing tactic?  Or will
    the free market dictate that calling the unwilling is not a
    money-making proposition?  Or is the list seeded with honey pots to
    facilitate catching violators?  I find myself afraid to sign up.
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: 30 May 2003 (LAST-MODIFIED)
    From: RISKS-requestat_private
    Subject: Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)
    
     The RISKS Forum is a MODERATED digest.  Its Usenet equivalent is comp.risks.
    => SUBSCRIPTIONS: PLEASE read RISKS as a newsgroup (comp.risks or equivalent)
     if possible and convenient for you.  Alternatively, via majordomo,
     send e-mail requests to <risks-requestat_private> with one-line body
       subscribe [OR unsubscribe]
     which requires your ANSWERing confirmation to majordomoat_private .
     If Majordomo balks when you send your accept, please forward to risks.
     [If E-mail address differs from FROM:  subscribe "other-address <x@y>" ;
     this requires PGN's intervention -- but hinders spamming subscriptions, etc.]
     Lower-case only in address may get around a confirmation match glitch.
       INFO     [for unabridged version of RISKS information]
     There seems to be an occasional glitch in the confirmation process, in which
     case send mail to RISKS with a suitable SUBJECT and we'll do it manually.
       .UK users should contact <Lindsay.Marshallat_private>.
    => SPAM challenge-responses will not be honored.  Instead, use an alternative 
     address from which you NEVER send mail!
    => The INFO file (submissions, default disclaimers, archive sites,
     copyright policy, PRIVACY digests, etc.) is also obtainable from
     http://www.CSL.sri.com/risksinfo.html  ftp://www.CSL.sri.com/pub/risks.info
     The full info file will appear now and then in future issues.  *** All
     contributors are assumed to have read the full info file for guidelines. ***
    => SUBMISSIONS: to risksat_private with meaningful SUBJECT: line.
    => ARCHIVES: http://www.sri.com/risks
     http://www.risks.org redirects you to the Lindsay Marshall's Newcastle archive
     http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/VL.IS.html      [i.e., VoLume, ISsue]
       Lindsay has also added to the Newcastle catless site a palmtop version 
       of the most recent RISKS issue and a WAP version that works for many but 
       not all telephones: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/w/r
     http://the.wiretapped.net/security/info/textfiles/risks-digest/ .
     http://www.planetmirror.com/pub/risks/ ftp://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/risks/
    ==> PGN's comprehensive historical Illustrative Risks summary of one liners:
        http://www.csl.sri.com/illustrative.html for browsing,
        http://www.csl.sri.com/illustrative.pdf or .ps for printing
    
    ------------------------------
    
    End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 22.79
    ************************
    



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