THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 1, 1996 TAG: 9512300282
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Richard and Roger Grimes
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines
Doubleclick authors Richard and Roger Grimes of Virginia Beach happen to be twin brothers and computer authorities. Their discourse on life in the computer lane appears every other week in Hampton Roads Business Weekly.
Roger: We hope you had happy holidays this year. It was a typical Christmas for the Grimes family this year. I spent Christmas Eve wrapping presents with my lovely wife and two young daughters. Richard, naturally, spent Christmas Eve in the back of a police cruiser explaining why his car didn't have a city sticker. What excuse did you give the police officer, anyway?
Richard: I think a great philosopher once said it best: Bad boys, bad boys. Whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?
Roger: Richard is locally famous for never having a current city sticker on his car. And now, because of a fantastic new search program on the Internet, a wider audience will be able to thrill to his criminal exploits.
Richard: Altavista, located on the World Wide Web at http://www.altavista.digital.com/ is hands down the best search engine I've seen - and it's simple to use. You just go to the page, fill in the blank provided with the subjects you want to search for and press the button.
Roger: Seconds later, Altavista will bring back thousands of Web sites containing the words in your list, making sure to list the closest matches first. To test the power of this software, Richard and I decided to search for two subjects, making sure that we picked obscure, little known subjects.
Richard: Meaning Roger and myself. Roger and I searched for Web pages containing our names and we were surprised by the results. Not only did Altavista find all of our columns listed on the Pilot Online, but it alerted us to still more copies at Virginia Tech, where The Virginian-Pilot maintains an online archive of its old stories.
Roger: Naturally, it also found references to other people with the same names but far more interesting jobs.
Richard: Does this mean that I shouldn't congratulate you for being named Canada's Minister of Tourism?
Roger: You can narrow down searches by entering more search words. For instance, if I wanted to make sure I only found documents pertaining to me, I would first use the search words ROGER GRIMES, then add BROTHER CITY STICKER CRIMINAL NORFOLK JAIL.
Richard: That would definitely narrow down the search.
Roger: If you're looking for special subjects on the World Wide Web, you should definitely check out Altavista.
Anonymous Remailers
Roger: On a different note, we'd like to mention another Internet tool that only a few people know about - but this is a double-edged tool that can be used for the wrong reasons by malicious people.
Richard: We are referring to something called an anonymous remailer. It works this way. Let's say I wanted to post e-mail to an Internet discussion group for recovering city sticker offenders, only I'm embarrassed by my criminal record and don't want to make my name public.
Roger: Other less scrupulous people than Richard might revel in their criminal activities and boast about it to 250,000 strangers.
Richard: Exactly. Normally, an e-mail message carries a return e-mail address and other information that could lead people to discover my identity. Not a good idea. Instead, I send the e-mail to an anonymous remailing site. The software at that site strips all identifying marks off of my e-mail and inserts whatever information I prefer. Then the remailer sends my e-mail off to whatever destination I want it to go to.
Roger: People who frequent sex abuse discussion groups on the Internet find these remailing services a godsend.
Richard: Like any good thing, remailers can be abused. Some unscrupulous people use anonymous remailers to harass other people. One woman, for instance, was repeatedly sent sexually suggestive e-mail messages. Because the messages were sent through a remailer, she couldn't identify the offender. Eventually, he tired of the pursuit - or grew up - and stopped e-mailing her.
Roger: I've been getting unwanted e-mail advertisements. Normally, I e-mail the person and ask politely that they stop. In this case, I couldn't because the person used an anonymous remailer. So, I did the next best thing: I contacted the remailing service and told them that the person was harassing me with unwanted e-mail. Because the person ran a reputable remailer, he programmed his remailer to stop forwarding the advertisements.
Richard: If you're being harassed by someone using an anonymous remailer, contacting the remailer service should be your first step. If the remailer can't or won't help you, then contact the police. Because the Internet uses telephone lines, your harasser may be violating federal laws. Let the police decide. MEMO: The family man can be reached at groger@infi.net
The city sticker bandit can be reached at rgrimes infi.net by CNB