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Rhetorical question- but what is it going to take for the IT Community to start treating Gmail and the rest of the "too big to block" as adversarial entities and actually block them for their bad behavior. Pie in the sky I know.

> IT Community

No such thing. And if you just want to assign anybody who works in IT to it in order to create the concept of such of a thing, a large percentage of this community would work at Google, a company that depends on Google, or a company that has the same attitude as google.

So it's less pie in the sky than nonsense. People don't talk about things changing in the physical world without talking about force, mass and inertia, but when it comes to people, the theory of power just evaporates and we start wishing for things to spontaneously happen because we've declared that they should happen.

With some weird definition of "should" which relies on our personal conception of the world. In the physical world, we say something "should" happen when we expect it to happen based on our theories of how the world works. With people we say things "should" happen when we personally want them hard enough.


There was a time before Google when various mailing lists of grumpy sysadmins in key institutions could decide the fate of a new mail sender, internet-wide. But yes that "internet community" is small fry now, and can only cut off their own noses if they don't like Google's mail policies.

Before Google, AOL were the previous big-beast mail host, and they did provide some tools to help diagnose why you couldn't get through to their users. It still felt like there was more of a balance of power towards the grumpy sysadmins.


Microsoft refuses to deliver legitimate emails to hotmail.com addresses so I tell clients how it is.

I’m not jumping through hoops when I’m not doing anything wrong. SPF, DMARC, DKIM, IP address not on a blacklist, and I send zero spam. Only human-written client communications 1:1.

So, my clients with hotmail.com addresses don’t get emails from me. I can call them, they can call me.


Microsoft refuses to send emails to itself? How bizarre.

Nothing- they are just hoping this will blow over.

Do I have to start emailing the people in the leaked documents with screenshots?

Leaving a paper trail of you having accessed unauthorized private info is a bad idea, some crazy lawyer could decide to include you in a suit. Just not worth the hassle. Email a tip line about the general situation.

How is it unauthorised if it's freely available via a search without having to bypass any login?

It'd be like putting up an advert and then trying to sue anyone who sees it.


Some crazy lawyer included my parents in a traffic death suit’s defendants while they were victims who had their car badly damaged when the reckless driver rammed into two cars (including my parents’) and two pedestrians. The question isn’t whether you’re at fault, it’s whether you want to risk getting a court summons.

I'm confused about what you're saying - are you saying that your parents risked getting a court summons though they weren't at fault?

Surely the entire point of the court system is to determine who, if anyone, is at fault.


They didn't get a court summons but the court did call and send the plaintiff's filing. They were clearly not in the wrong in that case but it was still a hassle and quite a confusion. The point is people can sue you even if it's BS and you still need to respond.

In this case leaving a paper trail of having accessed unauthorized confidential information looks a lot like being in the wrong, so the potential hassle is a lot higher. You can argue it's not unauthorized after all, and you'll likely win, but you may need to expand time and energy arguing in the first place. And it could be significant.

Edit: In addition, (a) accidentally opening a confidential document -> oops, close immediately; and (b) taking a screenshot could be different legally (NAL yada yada), doing the latter could make it a lot harder to defend yourself.


HN saves

Determining who is at fault involves extreme annoyance and inconvenience for those who had fingers pointed at them, regardless of whether or not they were actually involved. If you involve yourself willingly, you're inviting that on yourself.

Not to forget some eager prosecutors. They can still try to prosecute for accessing material even if they end up losing. Lot of hassle there.

Good call!

Admit no fault, ignore the criticism, keep doing the same thing, receive no consequences. I wonder how the folks at Fiverr's Tel Aviv HQ learned this strategy.


I wonder if that's on purpose to poison the release. Would make sense. At least it is towards the end of the article.


Major points are also missed. The fee is enabled at the federal law level: 49 U.S.C. § 114 & 49 U.S.C. § 44901


This seems to be on par for this Iowa county which their ignorance sadly has painted a major target on their innocent citizens- related article:

"Dallas County Attorney Matt Schultz told KCCI: "I want to be clear that the decision to dismiss the criminal charges that resulted in this civil case against Dallas County was made by a previous County Attorney. I am putting the public on notice that if this situation arises again in the future, I will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law."

https://www.kcci.com/article/coalfire-contractors-settle-dal...


Schultz (a ‘tough on crime Republican’) is the prosecutor who filed charges when this thing happened originally, so no surprise he still defends his decision.


The Italians obviously don't


I'm not sure he brings anything new to the argument, well except a disdain for physicists.


fair point, but most people don't open up chemistry books.


Question bouncing around in my mind reading this, especially with money involved, is why did this not cross the line into criminal fraud?


Because noone has stated an injury and made a complaint about it. It's likely that there's some copyright infringement going on with the current state of the repo (due to lack of the author's adherence to the requirements of the license). That could be subject to a DMCA notice if any of the previous contributors decided to make one.


Conspiracy would be more appropriate, no? Thing is, when you conspire to attack a corporation, you have FBI agents bending over backwards for you and your precious profits. When you conspire to attack a bunch or normal people, you're lucky if anyone does anything at all.


Wait? They aren't?


Ask again later


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