Re: Spam due to MHonArc list archives?

[Earl Hood <earl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On December 22, 2003 at 18:55, Gunnar Hjalmarsson wrote:

> I have just deserted my main email address because of the volume of 
> spam that is being sent to it. I suppose that I previously was 
> inexcusably naive in this respect by using that address on various 
> mailing lists and Usenet groups.

Usenet is probably the biggest location for harvesting addresses.

I have no plans of deserting my main mail address, and I receive
over 300 spam messages a day.

> But still...  Today I really think that people who archive this list 
> should know better than publishing email addresses on the web.

It is not that simple.  Many archive sites do not hide addresses,
and this includes the W3C archives and the IETF archives.

> Am I missing something? Or is there room for improvements? ;-)

Part of it boils down to the nature and goals of a mail archive.
Personally, not hiding the addresses provides a useful information
to the archive reader, facilitates open discussions, and with the
case of the mhonarc.org archives, useful navigational aids.

Surprisely, I have received very, very little messages about the
open nature of the archives.

I think obscuring provides little benefit, and if I was an address
harvester software writer, I can easily beat all non-javascript-based
obfsucation techniques.  Therefore, for best protection against
harvesting, one must complete mask or hide any addresses.

If this is done for the mhonarc archives, the following will not
be available:

  * [Original] link, and access to raw mail messages, will be disabled.

  * From author link will be disabled.  There will be no quick link
    to list other messages for a given author.


Personally, I think that people who are concerned about receiving
spam, should do what you are now doing, do not provide a real address
to public messages.

However, I understand the problems spam has on people.  Therefore,
I will take a poll (via a separate message to the list) on what other
users think.

--ewh