The profile of a conlanger (fwd)

I accidentally sent a reply to Ed personally, instead of to the list
(forgot to mind the reply-to) and got a very strange message from
Ed's new service provider. My comments are in {curly brackets}.

Ed, can *you* tell them that it's OK to receive mail from me? I don't
think I want to go along with this. It's not done to force people to
go somewhere to confirm that you want to send mail - that effectively
stops people sending mail if they have no web access.

   Irina
____________________________________________________________________

From spamtest@msgto.com Fri Oct 29 11:08:46 1999
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 04:35:04 -0400 (EDT)
From: MsgTo.com AntiSpam Service <spamtest@...>
To: ira@rempt.xs4all.nl
Subject: Re: Your message to edward@msgto.com

    [ Part 1, Text/PLAIN  10 lines. ]
    [ Unable to print this part. ]

{But it says the same as the following - they don't know, or don't
want to know, that not everybody wants HTML mail}

MsgTo.com Spam Protection Test

You recently sent an email to edward@msgto.com.

{Yes, I realize that now. My mistake, apparently.}

edward@msgto.com uses MsgTo's unique system to eliminate spam and take
control of email.

{"Take control of email"? Who - Ed or his provider? Of course Ed
should have control of his own email, but I don't think his provider
should.}

Since this is your first email message to edward@msgto.com, please verify
that you are an individual sender, and not a bulk email sender, by
following the instructions on the image below.

{Images in mail are also not done}

MsgTo.Com Spam Protection Test

                                    [IMAGE]

If the image above did not display, or you were not able to click on it,
please try to click the following link:
http://aleph.msgto.com/servlet/TuringServlet/test/1107309724.941186103334.13727

{I can try all I like, but I'm using text mode. Dear msgto.com. not
everybody uses a web browser to read their mail; not everyone even
has something to click with. I can highlight it and press Enter, and
I've even trained Pine to start Lynx when I do that, but I keep my
mail activity separate from my WWW activity and I'm not online all
the time, so Lynx can't reach it. It's very uncivil to assume that
people have permanent web access and not to provide an alternative}

If you want to learn more: What is This?

{No, I don't want to learn more; I want you (that is msgto.com; I'm
not blaming Ed for using an incompetent provider) to offer a way
for people without web access to send mail, and to learn that there
are people who use text-only for mail by choice or necessity. The
whole thing gives me an eerie feeling that msgto.com assumes that if
you can't click a link you're a spammer; very uncomfortable}


            Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastynay.
                     irina@rempt.xs4all.nl (myself)
       http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/index.html (English)
    http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/backpage.html (Nederlands)