Re: Limiting access to US users only

From: James Hodson (jUNDERSCOREhodson_at_ntlworld.com.invalid)
Date: 09/17/03 

Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2003 16:33:20 +0100

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 14:39:06 GMT, Lars M. Hansen
<badnews@hansenonline.net> wrote:

>Create a template to mail back to these types of questions. It should
>only take a couple of seconds to deal with, and wasted bandwidth? A 20
>word e-mail saying "sorry, we can not make any exceptions. Sincerely..."
>hardly takes up any significant amount of server storage, bandwidth or
>any other resource...
>
Hi Lars et al

I perhaps fall into TR's "functional imbeciles" (like it) category
regarding firewalls and security but that's why I've been lurking
hereabouts for several weeks. I wish to learn.

Assuming The Marauder's site uses forms for email contacts, would not
something along the lines of the following work? Somewhere on the form
add a drop-down box for the sender's country, with USA being the
default. If the country selected is the USA then the mail is flagged
as valid and is dealt with appropriately. If the country code is not
the USA then the mail is sent to a different email addy (I don't know
whether this is possible - I'm certainly an HTML functional imbecile).
Any mail sent to this second address will automatically trigger a "I
said we don't deal with foreigners, dummie." reply.

I'd think that this sort of approach would deal with most of The
Marauder's unwanted queries. I doubt you'll ever be able to stop those
who delve into the code to extract an address. As an example, in the
days when I used a modem and had to pay hefty telephone charges (UK)
for every second I was online, I'd often seek out the email address
from a form so that I could go offline and compose any email in peace
in Eudora.

BTW, I shall not bother mentioning those unfunctional imbeciles who
don't know whereabouts in the world they live.

Just my £0.02 musings.
Regards
James 

-- 
"Sorry mate, I didn't see you" is not a satisfactory excuse.