Email and other 3rd party initiated packet streams
Any and all email communication not using PKI (or similar) should be considered public. Senders acknowledge that any “Confidentiality Notices” included in such messages are, in fact, irrelevent. If it is important that your confidentiality terms be enforced, please take the time to make it physically possible.
Senders who wish to actually create a real confidential email path are encouraged to contact the Admin ( [email protected] ), and he will happily help you implement a real PKI solution between you and your recipient.
Dig Safely New York, Inc. will not consider E-Mail to be a reliable transport. As the primary method of compromising networks, machines, and people, and since Dig Safely New York, Inc. must operate in a high availability environment where life safety is directly impacted, all inbound E-Mail is considered hostile until proven otherwise. Various automated rules are in place to enforce this.
Any e-mail that violates these rules will be silently discarded without notifying the sender. In some specific cases, the Dig Safely New York, Inc. Admin may opt to recover specific discarded messages at its sole descretion. The decision of the Admin to recover or allow a specific message, or not, is final.
Arbitrary 2nd and 3rd parties will understand that, should they choose to utilize any Dig Safely New York, Inc. asset, they are responsible for adhering to “acceptable” use, regardless of if they were invited to use such assets by Dig Safely New York, Inc.. We expressly state that E-Mail is not an authoritative or reliable communication transport, and we have no responsibility to ensure your message is not discarded. Prospective job applicants should take careful note of this if sending applications or resumes via EMail; You are responsible for crafting and sending a message such that it will not be discarded. In no way, shape or form does Dig Safely New York, Inc. indicate we have a responsibility to allow any specific email content. Non-HTML Plaintext is a wonderful thing. A Word Document is not.
Dig Safely New York, Inc. does not grant any non-specific second or third parties any specific rights to utilize our networks or hardware. These networks and hardware systems exist for the sole purpose of facilitating the Dig Safely New York, Inc. mission. Anyone who, in the opinion of the Admin, repeatedly abuses, or allows to be abused, the purpose of these networks or hardware will find themselves restricted from its use. No-one has the authority to abuse our networks or hardware. In the event that your machine has been compromised and is actively taking action that would cause us harm, the DSNY Admin will take actions to have the abuse stopped. If you are unaware of your machine’s activities, understand that your ignorance is irrelevant. The Admin must do what he can to protect the availability of our network. Period.
In no way does Dig Safely New York, Inc. consent to our networks or hardware being used for the purpose of solicitation for a 2nd or 3rd party product. Ever.
In no way does any single employee of Dig Safely New York, any 2nd party, nor any 3rd party have the authority to consent or “opt-in” to anything that involves or will utilize our networks or hardware, “prior business relationship” or not, and especially regardless of if the user somehow “indicates” that these assets may be used for such a purpose. No single user has such authority to consent to such utilization, and no single user has the authority to delegate the right to use our networks or hardware. Ever.
Some general guidelines for sending email to Dig Safely New York, Inc. with the minimum of fuss:
- Our mail server talks to ARIN netblocks only. Hosts located outside of the U.S. will be ignored.
- Our mail server will not talk to any host that is listed in the CSMA or NJABL blacklists.
- Our mail server will not talk to any host that has a DHCP address.
- Chain letters are not tolerated, and will result in an immediate 30 day banning on the first attempt. Subsequent attempts will result in a permanent blacklisting. No exceptions.
- E-Cards are likewise forbidden. All of our users have home e-mail addresses on someone else’s servers; you are welcome to send them there. 30 days on the first offense; permanent thereafter.
- Anything not specifically relevent to the function of Dig Safely New York, Inc.’s operation will likely be discarded at the descretion of the automated ruleset.
- People who blindly mass-forward trash (e.g. “Jokes of the day”) are strongly frowned upon. While it is not explicitly blocked by our rulesets… if your ratio of “junk email” to legitimate email gets high enough… you will be banned. Such messages had best be an exception to your behavior.
- Any email containing any type of scripting or executable content will be discarded. Web-Mail users should take extreme care to ensure that no jscript snippets are included in any messages sent (YAHOO Mail users take note).
- Any email containing copious amounts of irrelevent HTML formatting will be discarded. If you wish for a user to see a webpage, send us a link to it, not a cut-n-paste of the page itself.
- Any email containing any automatically rendered non-text content shall be discarded. Includes backgrounds, stationaries, pictures, and corporate logo images. Inline graphics have no value in regards to the message content, and carry high risk of being an advertisement or mailborne exploit. In fact, 99% of image-bearing emails are exploitive in some form, and the few people who insist on including logo-images are holding the planet hostage to an irrelevent high risk embellishment. Dig Safely New York, Inc. will not participate in a high risk, zero value activity. No backgrounds, stationaries, or logos allowed.
- Any email containing an attached file that has a suspected exploit vector will be discarded.
- Any email that attempts to render external content will be discarded.
- Any email containing typing styles such as “OMG! r u there? LOL” will be discarded.
The biggest reason for having a blocked “legitimate” message is having a graphic logo as a signature, or other irrelevent adornment. Please, do not include them.
If you repeatedly have trouble passing the mail filter, I’d suggest you try sending your messages as plain text with no html part, no adornments, and nothing that isn’t exactly relevent to the specific purpose of the message. All mail clients allow for PlainText-only formatting during composition (in Outlook, Main Menu -> Format -> PlainText); most major mail clients will allow you to permanently specify it for specific contacts in your address book (e.g. Right-click on the address, “Send Options” -> “Send As Plaintext Only”).