Hi folks,

Thanks to Ebrima and others who have written to express concern about the
growing problem of impersonation on Gambia-L.  The situation is both
unfortunate, and sad.  You might recall that it all started when George Sarr
impersonated Tombong Saidy and for that, Mr. Sarr, was unsubscribed from the
list.  You might also remember that Mr. Sarr sent us another posting,
indicating that he was still on the list, under address, and indeed had a
more than one e-mail address subscribed.  Sadly enough, what he said
indicates a major limitation of the Internet that we all have to live with.
However, before you despair, I would like to remind you that the problems
posed by people such as Mr. Sarr are bearable, if anything for the fact that
these very habits will also be their undoing.  In other words, anyone who is
dishonest enough to impersonate other people, will also tend to manifest
such a character in other aspects of life, and hence, it's only a matter of
time before they self-destruct.

Having said that, I would like to say that the reason it's taken us a little
long to sort the problem out is that we've been doing some research (which
is a rather pompous way to say "reading") on how to get around the problem.
As you can imagine, impersonation is the last thing on our minds when we
think of what problems we could have running Gambia-L.  Momodou Camara, one
of the list managers has even gone to the extent of contacting another
mailing list for mailing list managers to seek help on the issue, and
received some help.  I have also revisited the Owner Manual and
re-configured the list setting to force all subscribers to confirm that
postings sent in their name is indeed from them.  For this reason, you will
from now receive a message from the server whenever it receives a posting
from your e-mail address.  The message will ask that you send a confirmation
reply to have the posting distributed, and if the posting was not from you,
you can ignore the confirmation request.  In that case, the original posting
will not be distributed to the list.

You will realize that this added step is going to be an inconvenience.
However, I trust that you will accept that it is better that we are all
inconvenienced in order to protect people from being impersonated, than to
have people who have fallen victim to the practice suffer on their own.  We
will retain this policy as long as we have the problem, or it's potential
around.  Please pardon the hassle.

I guess that's about it.  Have a great weekend, and best wishes.

Katim

----- Original Message -----
From: ebrima ceesay <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, May 06, 2000 6:54 AM
Subject: Managers: Do something about this impersonation


> Katim, Modou Camara, Malanding Jaiteh, Dr Janneh:
>
> kindly do something about the impersonation going on on Gambia-L before
the
> credibility of the list is reduced to thin air. Demba Jawo is the last
> person to have said that he was impersonated the other day.
>

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