More unintended effects of e-mail registration
There are going to be even more problems with registering sex offender e-mail addresses than already mentioned.
One is that this list of addresses is likely to be considered rather valuable by certain (kinds of) spammers, in particular the purveyors of pornography. After all, this list is highly self-qualified.
Given that a centralized list is constructed, as is proposed by federal and state legislation, it will be a target to be acquuired. And one doubts that the agency that maintains the e-mail address verifier (whether the address is known to be used by a registered sex offender) using this list will consider it as anything requiring lots of security.
But even then, even if the list itself is highly secured and the server that verifies e-mail addresses works as intended, the information in that list is still vulnerable. All a spammer has to do is to run his huge list of e-mail addresses (and whose e-mail address doesn't soon wind up on spammers' lists?) past the verifier and BINGO! he has a qualified list of sex offenders' e-mail addresses.
Soon after registered sex offenders will start receiving sex-oriented come-ons targeted specifically to them.
One possible result is a return to behaviors likely to result in re-offending -- creating even more victims in the process.
One is that this list of addresses is likely to be considered rather valuable by certain (kinds of) spammers, in particular the purveyors of pornography. After all, this list is highly self-qualified.
Given that a centralized list is constructed, as is proposed by federal and state legislation, it will be a target to be acquuired. And one doubts that the agency that maintains the e-mail address verifier (whether the address is known to be used by a registered sex offender) using this list will consider it as anything requiring lots of security.
But even then, even if the list itself is highly secured and the server that verifies e-mail addresses works as intended, the information in that list is still vulnerable. All a spammer has to do is to run his huge list of e-mail addresses (and whose e-mail address doesn't soon wind up on spammers' lists?) past the verifier and BINGO! he has a qualified list of sex offenders' e-mail addresses.
Soon after registered sex offenders will start receiving sex-oriented come-ons targeted specifically to them.
One possible result is a return to behaviors likely to result in re-offending -- creating even more victims in the process.
posted by the administration at 2:33 PM
1 Comments:
Interestingly, a federal appeals court in California has ruled that police/prosecutors don't need to prove that email was solicited or even read for an offense to have occurred. People are at the mercy of whoever emails them. Sounds like a set-up waiting to happen.
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