New London, CT April 22. Houston we have a problem. There is an elephant in the room twice the normal size called a, "catch-all." If you don't know computers at all, this article is possibly explained better by clicking here. You can change your mind below by hitting the big, "Catch-All for Dummies" button but you're fine here.
For this interactive send an email now to a 'city official' you haven't met. Send a short message to kingkong@newlondonct.org <-click or copy/paste it into a recipient field on your webmail client. By attaching mailtracker code to our emails we've found it was opened less than a minute after being sent:
Explanation: Without keeping our catch-all setting disabled, any email you make up @ this domain will fly right in without being separated and discarded. Its up to this server's owners to determine what they do with these kinds of messages but it appears they go to a holding folder where sometimes as seen above, an admin or officials appears to open one here and there. This is probably a technical administrator, law enforcement personnel or a clerical official scanning the waste message folder for anything useful.
What should you expect to see come back after that? Well, it's should be the same bares-bones basic thing that would happen if you tried to make up and send a message to a random goggle address that you make up like, Kingkongthebigape387549@gmail.com <- Try now please. This email should be returned to you within under a minute because that is how email works on the web.
There. But New London has a trick you're not going to expect up it's sleeve. Next I will ask you to click to send an email to: AbeLincoln@newlondonct.org You can click on this address to open a new email message to send to it if your browser is configured like that. Otherwise you can copy and paste this fictitious address into a new email message the way you normally would. What happens?
Check back with your inbox five minutes later. Still nothing? Correct.
What we are seeing here is that unlike the email functions of the real world meaning those we reasonably expect to see when we send or receive email, the lack of a simple auto-return 'not delivered' message that leaves residents believing they've contacted an official is absurd, fully so.
The real world, meaning all of it outside the City of New London lets users know if their email missed their target as a basic courtesy. A 'not delivered' reply is the bare minimum courtesy that a conscious mail carrier can do for someone whose message they are carrying, when it has to be thrown out for the lack of a recipient.
This is practiced by the known instances of real businesses, municipalities, groups, individuals, charities and organizations. No one takes a letter, walks quietly to the corner, reads it perhaps then drops it in the well. In fact the data coming back from the mail trackers shows that a number of these misguided messages are being read, often minutes after being sent. The below is sent out at9:38 PM and is opened less than a minute later by accounts that were said to be inactive.
The catch-all unbuilds the trust and functionality to the same degree as would be expected if regular mail sent to 'Jimmy Hoffa' at New London's City Hall were never returned to their sender. As far as unbuilding trust, an incorrect belief would be fostered in the sender's mind by the simple lack of having the letter returned. As a result of applying the catch-all setting to the world of regular mail this way a resident would end up believing that Jimmy Hoffa, "...got my letter." when the polar opposite is true. No one did. And that's why the catch-all setting needs to be turned off as soon as possible at the newlondonct.org mail server. It is a simple matter of putting expectations, trust and accountability before disfunction and mistrust. For communications systems between taxpayers and governments especially, that dip in function and trust does measurable harm.
[insert city attorney's letter of April 21]
Find proof below that we pointed out exactly what this catch-all hacker setting meant for New London residents when we first detected that the catch-all was enabled for all City officials back in 2017. Before our local resident user base at newlondontimes.com could compel the city to fix the catch-all mail server problem, our entire site was hacked and destroyed while the domain name was illicitly transferred to an unknown owner(s) using a method of hacking that is still unknown to me as the site's first author and web developer, Jonathan Brand. And the effect of having the .com name stolen after being erased was that we could not use backups to restore our website for NL residents at that time. Is there real evidence of this? Absolute proof in fact.
A Web3 Archive called the "Wayback Machine" was quietly archiving newlondontimes.com throughout its brief shelflife. If you'll allow for the 12 second load time simply have a peak at the proof that we in fact covered this huge problem of the City's catch-all setting being turned on back in 2017 by clicking this Wayback Machine link to our first site covering the catch-all topic - just scroll down to the paragraph titled:
City of New London Uses Hacker Trick Called ‘Catch All’
Article comes from our original newlondontimes.com website in 2017
On April 21st, a letter from City's Attorney, Jeffrey Londregan reached our authors stating that the Mayor's legally permitted time delay in responding to our Freedom of Information or FOI request, was delayed. He explained that this was due to its having been sent to an 'old' email address for Mayor Passero, preventing him or the attorney from receiving it. (How does he know to mention the request at all?) Do not bother to hen pick at these little fissures or cracks as they sprawl into being, breaking out throughout the Mayor's fine storyline told by a fellow CT Bar member. Wait for the elephant-sized ones and then we'll review the plan for corrective action, an action that is the responsibility of the residents alone.
There was one issue with credibility of Jeff's written snail-mail to NLV from the start: It is hard to believe our municipal attorney's implicit claim that he and the mayor have not had an opportunity to read our initial FOI request.
When Attorney Londgregan's snail mail was received on April 21st, we sent out another message to the mayors "old" email address and even added Abe Lincoln as a recipient address at that same server. Here is the email we sent the night of the 21st:
Here is the .js tracker script returning a confirmation of receipt just minutes later:
Using The Catch-All Setting As A Non-Accountability Promise
Why Email to AbeLincoln@newlondonct.org Aren't Returned Markered Undelivered
When leaders told admins to change the City's email settings to enable "catch-all" mode, New London officials thought they had fully ensured a "non-accountability" promise to one another.
When a legal document we emailed Mayor Passero was delayed, the proposed reason for the delay was that an outdated email address had used. Since we can see outdated addresses receiving mail that is opened and since this document has been available on the web and in Google search, the reason for this delay only relate to the city's choice to use the catch-all setting. It seems less than likely that Mr. Passero or his attorney Mr. Londregan even lacked access to the FOI request emailed.
A true effect of using the City server's catch-all setting is that the same residents who bankroll the whole thing, from funding government officials' salaries to buying the technology with which they conduct business. Knowing our participation is so unwanted that many of our vital, heartfelt messages to leaders will sometimes be thrown out without telling us leaves us out in the cold essentially, and unable to participate or even know if our emails will ever reach another person.
It’s like the city’s holding a hackathon we’re not invited in to.