Archived Edition of Chromatic Musings

One of the many reasons why I don't like automatic filtering

Content filters can stop your email if you happen to have a naughty word as a component of your name. Just ask Craig Cockburn.

See, Cockburn has a problem with e-mail. Or more to the point, e-mail has a problem with him. His e-mail doesn't always get where it's going. He first stumbled upon all this more than a year ago when he tried to update his Hotmail account. The online registration insisted that his profile contained characters that were unacceptable.

"After an extensive debate with Hotmail about this,'' says Cockburn, "the obvious explanation was the first four letters of my last name was one of the censored words.''

Never mind that his name is his name and it has been all his life. Never mind that it is a noble and popular name in Scotland, where he lives. Never mind that it's pronounced Co-burn.