[ih] Meta: attachment policy (was Re: clever usc creation)

[Jack Haverty]

Speaking of "walking the walk".... but on a more serious note.

Over the last decade or two, I've suggested, several times, to several 
ISOC administrations, that ISOC "walk the walk" with email by serving as 
a prominent example of "how to do email right".   That of course might 
require policies to possibly be changed, technical flaws to be 
addressed, educational efforts, and even perhaps governments' actions.

Most Internet users today likely experience things like phishing 
attacks, emails with forged sources, and other such effects that make 
email untrustworthy in their views.   Most of the Internet users have no 
idea how to protect themselves from such attacks.  Most regulatory and 
government authorities seem to have no idea what, if anything, they can 
do about it.

 From a historical perspective, there has been lots of work in the past 
to create technologies that address such problems.  In the email world, 
that includes things like digital signatures, S/MIME, DMARC, and many 
others.

But few users of the Internet use, or perhaps even know how to use, or 
that they should use, such technologies.  Personally, all of my emails 
are digitally signed, but I rarely see signatures on incoming email.  
Perhaps that's because few know how to use it.  Perhaps it just doesn't 
work.  Perhaps it has serious flaws, such as the fact that passing 
through a "forum" such as this one invalidates a digital signature, 
making it ineffective and looking like a forgery.  Perhaps no one thinks 
it's a problem to address.

My suggestion over the past decades has been that ISOC use email as a 
vehicle for demonstrating how to Do Email Right.  I.e., to show others 
how to "walk the walk", ISOC could lead down the walk, show users how to 
do it right, find the cracks and potholes in the walkway, and perhaps 
task or convince IETF to fix them.  A good start would be to have every 
official email from ISOC appear in all users' mailboxes in a way that 
they can trust it actually came from ISOC.  Perhaps set up the 
technology and processes so that every member of ISOC can send 
authenticated email.

With all the work that went in to developing such technologies, going as 
far back as the 1970s, personally I don't understand why nothing seems 
to have happened, to at least make email more trustworthy.   Anyone know 
more?

/Jack Haverty
(my digital signature is probably invalid when you get this; you'll just 
have to trust that I actually did write it...)

On 7/2/26 21:19, Carl Malamud via Internet-history wrote:
> Well, if we’re going to walk the walk and do Internet History the right way
> we should go totally 7-bit.  I vote that in addition to attachments, we ban
> Unicode.
>
> On Thu, Jul 2, 2026 at 9:10 PM Andrew Sullivan via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> While there are doubtless many issues with Internet Society systems that
>> can be laid at their (and depending on the age, my) feet, this is just a
>> matter of list policy. AFAIK this list doesn’t allow attachments.
>> Attachments make it through Internet Society mail systems just fine.
>>
>> Best regards ,
>>
>> A
>> —
>> Andrew Sullivan
>> Please excuse my clumbsy thums
>>
>>> On Jul 2, 2026, at 19:36, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history <
>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>> Well apparently image attachments don't make it through  the ISOC mail
>> systems.
>>> Here is a link to the photo I mentioned...
>>>
>>> https://cavebear.com/images/misc/steve-and-eve.jpg
>>>
>>>> On 7/2/26 12:20 PM, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:
>>>> I am so very thrilled to see Steve Casner in this collection.
>>>>
>>>> He and I worked very closely together for several years and after that
>> he and his wife Karen used to come over to our house for gatherings and to
>> attend plays at Santa Cruz Shakespeare.
>>>> I never had an conversation with Steve Casner that did not leave me
>> more educated and informed than I had been before.  In my mind there is a
>> tie for the prize of "nicest person on the Internet" between Steve Casner
>> and John Romkey.
>>>> I don't know if it is appropriate on this list to include a photo (Of
>> Steve C and Eve S - [and Dave Crocker and I believe the back of Bob
>> Hinden's head] , but here it goes...  (This was taken at the Computer
>> History Museum event for Danny Cohen.)
>>>>          --karl--
>>>>
>>>>> On 7/2/26 8:01 AM, vinton cerf via Internet-history wrote:
>>>>>
>> https://viterbischool.usc.edu/news/2026/06/for-americas-250th-we-created-commemorative-stamps-of-trojan-builders/
>>>>> v
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