The Washington Post website, like many news websites, has a feature that lets you send someone an e-mail with a link to an article from the site. Every once in a while some anonymous troll will use this method to e-mail me an article about Israel, along with some obnoxious comment describing Israel as a Nazi state. Today, Holocaust Remembrance Day, I received such an e-mail by way of the Washington Post, with a link to this story about the latest suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. Above the story was a line of boilerplate from the WaPo ("You have been sent this message from adrag1@msn.com as a courtesy of the Washington Post") followed by a personalized greeting from the troll:
Another freedom fighter strikes a blow to end the illegal occupation by the jackbooted thugs of the neo-nazi IDF. Let freedom ring!My e-mail back to the WaPo:
The message below says that it was sent "courtesy of the Washington Post". I know that the WaPo does not applaud suicide terrorism, but still, it's a little tasteless for such an unsolicited message to arrive "courtesy of the Washington Post", don't you think?Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at April 29, 2003 11:29 PMAt the very least, you might include the sender's IP address in messages of this type, so that when people misuse your site to harass unsuspecting members of the public, they don't enjoy full anonymity.
In particular, I think it would behove you in this instance to (a) disclose to me the IP address of the person who had this sent to me, and (b) to the extent possible, prevent that person from using your site to harass people in the future.