Trust inside a Community (was: Re: SA and Spear Phishing)

[Karsten Bräckelmann <gu...@rudersport.de>]

On Sat, 2011-03-19 at 00:46 +0400, Hamad Ali wrote:
> > Oh, well, the freemail address again is mostly unrelated to discussions
> > on this list -- though yeah, while hiding behind that address is not a
> > show-stopper, using your real address (especially if you provide mail
> > services) might help gain some credibility.
> 
> I think this is fair enough. Although I can't do masschecks, but it's
> reasonable and I would like SA to maintain its quality work. I'm
> sending this reply as text/plain (for compliance with old school
> manners),

/me happy :)

> and dropped my interest to do nightly masschecks due to lack of trust
> my free mail can give.

Well, this is not actually about using a freemailer address. That on its
own would be acceptable.

The point is, that you (so far) are a complete stranger, unknown to the
devs, community or anyone for that matter, with no previous track record
or any kind of history as far as this project is concerned. Let's face
it, the trust you can expect from us is "not a blackhat", which pretty
much equals getting help from the community at all.

Frankly, I was quite surprised to see that "stock SA doesn't catch a
particular type of my client's mail, so you should grant this stranger
mass-check privileges" statement. The scores are pretty much at the
heart of SA, and this privilege is about the highest you can be granted.

This is not about you personally, neither about your email address. This
is about earned and justifiable trust inside a community, affecting
*millions* of users world-wide.


> However, when it comes to my online activities, I'm a coward who wants
> to hide his identity.

Fair enough.

> ## back on topic ##

Yes, please.


-- 
char *t="\10pse\0r\0dtu\0.@ghno\x4e\xc8\x79\xf4\xab\x51\x8a\x10\xf4\xf4\xc4";
main(){ char h,m=h=*t++,*x=t+2*h,c,i,l=*x,s=0; for (i=0;i<l;i++){ i%8? c<<=1:
(c=*++x); c&128 && (s+=h); if (!(h>>=1)||!t[s+h]){ putchar(t[s]);h=m;s=0; }}}