I’ve only been an e-mail administrator for 30 years, but there are NO RULES that will guarantee you only get legitimate email and no spam!
There are anti-spam filters that can do a good job filtering out spam (gmail has very good ones, AOL not so much, Yahoo–meh!), but they still let some spam through and have a false positive rate around 1%.
All other emails to that address are spam by definition. There’s a chance that something could slip through, but I suspect the odds are infinitesimal.
It seems me that your previous statement about not needing a special email address for this purpose is contradicted by your suggestions about how to prevent spam.
BTW, your suggestions can all cause both false positives and false negatives. People are notoriously bad at using ‘required’ subject headers, time limits don’t prevent spam, and whitelisted addresses can be spoofed.
I once set up some new (non-obvious, or so I thought) email addresses (on multiple servers) and did not publicize them ANYWHERE. It took less than 4 hours for them to all start getting spammed. The network traffic monitors say that 98% of all email traffic is spam, and I believe that.
Here is what I wrote, notice what is in red:
It is not necessary to create a new account. However, it may be better to do so, and the spam can be well-managed.
If this is required round by round, subject line issues should be cleared by round 1. You’re right, the combination of the three items won’t prevent spam. However, the combination of the three items will make successful spam highly unlikely.
As do I. But the above three requirements make filtering for a tournament highly reliable.
Your initial claim was a sweeping statement that the END was at least as good as paper scoresheets for social distancing purposes. That implies covering all aspects as otherwise you would have included the words “on average”. I focused on certain aspects that affect me as a TD which means, strangely enough, focusing on claims that require using the scoresheets and I said that with an END there was more contact needed on average (or more time delaying social distance dancing to have the player making the contact if you want to point out that the TD doesn’t necessarily have to be the one doing the contact). Even the shortest scoresheet you mentioned had 40 moves, so even using that as a benchmark would mean that some claims would be made from moves 33 to 40 and games in that range with a paper scoresheet would not need to be turned over (0% unless there were cross-outs and the sheet needed to be turned over to reach move 40) while games with an END would need to have the display advanced (almost 100% of them depending on whether or not there were missed or illegal moves entered on the END that invalidated it as a valid scoresheet prior to reaching move 33). So if 5% of the claims were in the 33 to 40 move range that would mean that for disputed games in the 1 to 40 move range that a paper scoresheet would need contact in essentially 0% and an END would need it in almost 5%. On average the END needs more contact. If you want to say that higher average is insignificant that is an entirely different argument. My personal experience is that non-scholastic tournaments have a very definite majority of the disputed claims happening after move 32 (usually most of those before move 60 - the length of the vast majority of scoresheets I see) while scholastic tournaments I’ve done are probably in the 45-70% range happening before move 33 (maybe 3% are before move 10).
Spam is a fact of life with any known e-mail address or cell phone number. My work cellphone number is not published so it only runs about 5% of the texts being spam. My business e-mail address runs about 25% spam and my personal address runs less because it is not a published address. I will accept your modification that a scoresheet account does not technically need to be created, though I still strongly think it would be best practice to avoid being included in a multi-use account and having the scoresheets either cluttering up that account or getting lost in the shuffle. Such an account would need to have its address publicized to be useful.
Even with a spam blocker I have to check the business spam folders because when the spam filters are set high enough to be useful they will also flag actual business e-mail as spam (as one example, when dealing with automotive EDI there is a common business-standard abbreviation that unfortunately is spelled the same as a term that even leniently set spam filters will flag and block - requiring white-listing senders that use the business standard term, and having to regularly check the spam folder and white-list additional senders that are responding to a thread or starting a job with EDI activities). With scoresheets and player names the chance of a spam blocker being overly aggressive goes down but if the player names are in the subject line then typos could still trigger it. At least the correctly spelled player names that would trigger it (one female WIM comes to mind) may be possible to determine in advance to let an organizer know when it is almost definitely necessary to check the spam folder. You may have overlooked it, but in an earlier post I did say this would also affect sending pictures of paper scoresheets - collecting the paper scoresheets in a box and storing them for a week or so may be a safer way of handling them, and many organizers are busy enough that it may well be normal that waiting a week is standard practice anyway.
If I were to require people to turn in a scoresheet as part of verifying that the game was played, which is typical practice at large FIDE rated tournaments, they would have to turn in a paper scoresheet. Certainly it would be cumbersome to have the score e-mailed, with no guarantee of it being seen for days or weeks after the event is over. A player using an END could social distance himself to a corner and write his score on the official scoresheets provided and then drop it into the scoresheet box for collation and checking. However, most tournaments do not require turning in scoresheets. Paper scoresheets and END scores may technically belong to the organizer, but few organizers collect them. In reality, the scores are the players’ to do with as they wish.
As far as using an END to resolve questions and disputes, the END user would have to provide a means to decontaminate his device before anyone else has access to it. It is not clear which cleaner is most effective against the virus or if it is possible to clean them enough to be safe. The player would have to bring bottles of disinfectant (preferably not to drink it), wipes, and a sufficient number of gloves. I doubt that anyone would want to see their device placed inside a microwave. Since they have some similarities to phones, they will probably “sparkle nice.” At least that is what a friend told me his daughter said when she put his iphone into the microwave when she was mad at him for not playing with her. As safety is going to be an ongoing issue for TDs at tournaments, it would be best not to jeopardize them by having them come into contact with an END or a phone with a picture of a scoresheet. A paper scoresheet can also be contaminated, but it is easier to see and have the player move about to show the moves.
ENDs do not resolve distancing issues. They are no better or worse than regular paper scoresheets in that regard. The question is moot for the time being as tournaments are not going to take place for a while. The question is even more moot for me as, when we do resume, I still will require the use of paper scoresheets as all, and I mean all, electronic devices will be banned from the tournament and spectator areas of any tournament I organize. Yes, that will be noted in pre-event publicity and in announcements on site.
Thank you both for proving the point.
That exists now. It’s basically an END.
But tablets would work.
Take an END, add a module for connected play, require that connected play be only on a WiFi network specified by the organizer at the site.
There are of course some details there, but it isn’t that far away. I’m fairly certain ChessNoter could do this if there were a promoter for the work to be done.
Except that the organizer, not the player, would furnish the device, to allay possible fears of cheating via the use of external software.
Bill Smythe
That’s not a concern. The organizer need only to control the feed.
Any system in which user-provided devices are permitted is going to have issues with ensuring that there are no chess engines or other devices that could be used for cheating installed on them. The Tik-Tok app is a good example of what can go wrong with apps, it apparently has access to all sort of stuff on your phone that you probably don’t want it accessing.
A system with organizer-provided devices is safer, though not necessarily foolproof.
The devices already have that property, and the software and feed being used to control the tournament will already check the device to see if anything is running other than one one piece of allowed software. This really doesn’t seem to be an issue.
I didn’t know of any END that can interface with a central system to send/receive moves from another specific END so that a game can be played without a board and without passing the END back and forth between the players or having somebody enter all of the moves for both players.
I also didn’t know of any END that allows interactive remote monitoring by a central system to verify only one specific function was running.
I didn’t know of any central system that is totally immune to hacking from any and all devices that might be connected to it.
I am making an assumption that any chess engine is too complex to mimic an END after being configured and renamed to the program name of an END. (the cases I know of that involved END spoofing were by configured chess engines on unconnected devices).
The problem is there’s no way for ME to know that YOUR device hasn’t been tampered with. You may choose to believe the result of some kind of scan, I’ve been fooled too often to fall for that one.
Jeff, before taking something completely out of context, perhaps you should read what was written in the prior post. I had said that the functionality that you vaguely outline above needs to be added. ENDS already have the functionality of not running other software of displaying games, etc.
I don’t see the word “needs” anywhere in the post to which Jeff was responding. I see only “already have” and “will already check”. In an earlier post, you said that “the organizer needs to control the feed”, but I don’t see how that really addresses Jeff’s points.
You seem convinced that ENDs are somehow immune to any form of hacking or misuse (which would make them unique among all electronic devices). Many of us are not so convinced.
Considering the amount of work needed to change a standalone one-person device to an interactive multi-input/multi-output/clock-capable device, saying that ENDs already have the basic functionality of the devices is kind of like saying that a Schwinn bicycle already has the basic functionality of a high-performance motorcycle (it has a seat, handlebars and wheels).
Either an END needs to be massively changed before being usable for Smythe’s tournament (kind of like turning a Sopwith Camel into a 747) or mentioning ENDs is an irrelevant red herring.
The golden concept of an END locking out all other programs would have to be changed to allow the communication programs, and would have to be on-the-fly-configurable enough to allow the different communication programs that various organizers would use (nothing starts out with, or keeps, everybody using the same communication programs - which version of Windows do your computers use and which did they used to use? let alone which version of which web browser?). Once you add the flexibility to allow configurable lock-out bypasses you run the risk of the lock-outs being rendered useless.
Considering what happened with some manufacturers having their cars’ computer systems react differently to pollution control monitoring, people would not particularly trust a game-beginning check of a device not provided by the organizer. There have already been people running a non-END configured to look like an END. If people use their own devices there would end up being chess programs configured to look like the communication programs. That doesn’t even get into organizers being hesitant to allow unknown devices to plug into, and potentially infect, their networks.
Not really sure what pollution control has to do with chess tournaments.
I think he’s referring to how the pollution control software knew whether or not a test was being administered and adjusted the settings to maximize performance during the test, thus producing results that were quite different from real-world performance.
In a similar fashion, it might not be too hard for software intended to allow cheating on a chess device to detect whether or not is being scanned.
One of the nastier computer worms I’ve seen consisted of one line of rather innocuous looking code. Multiple antivirus experts examined that code before someone figured out what it really did.