valid usernames

[Derek Martin]

On Thu, Nov 11, 2004 at 11:37:12AM +0900, Derek Martin wrote:
> One possible answer might be, "We want to use e-mail addresses
> of the form first.last at my site."  Well, if that's what you want,
> you can (and I think probably should) get it by using a more
> reasonable username, and mapping the first.last form in sendmail's
> virtusertable, or in the aliases file.  

I meant to also mention that, in general, I don't think this is a good
idea.  It's true that such a scheme makes it easy to guess people's
e-mail addresses, in order to get in touch with them...  But from a
security perspective, I think that's undesireable.  It also causes
problems when namespace collisions occur.

The fact is, no one really cares what your address is, except for
marketing types.  At most, they'll have to type it once, and after
that they just select it from their address book.  As often as not,
they don't need to type it even once, because they can just reply to
an e-mail that you sent, or cut-and-paste it from somewhere else (IM
window, someone else's e-mail, or whatever).  I think most of the
time, no one even notices what your address is, and if they do, they
usually forget it immediately.

Marketing types tend to see this as an issue, because they think it
makes their site seem more professional, or easier to reach, or some
other such nonsense.  But it's just another cartload of pig manure
that typically comes from such organizations...  =8^)

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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