As someone who spent eight years with a VAN, Harbinger 1993-2001,
I'll add some comments from my perspective.
Harbinger was one of the VANs that did share our subscriber list
with the EDI Yellow Pages. We felt that any tool that had the
potential to increase the number of companies using EDI and to
increase EDI message traffic was good for EDI, good for VANs in
general, and good for Harbinger.
While the paper format of the EDI Yellow Pages did make it difficult
for someone to easily extract all Harbinger subscribers in order to
market to them, I'm sure it did happen. However, changing your VAN
subscription is not something you do quickly or routinely. Also, we
felt that if the only thing keeping our subscribers was the fact
that we kept their identity secret, we had other problems. We would
rather have them publicly listed and keep them through superior
customer service and product features.
As to individuals trying to hide their e-mail addresses, I attribute
that to the possibility (probability) of spam, not secrecy. I am
publicly listed on LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) and encourage
contacts, but only through the LinkedIn user interface - my e-mail
address is not listed. You can also find me in the phone book, but
it will cost you $0.37 to market to me. With Internet e-mail, it's
essentially free for the sender to spam me.
Eric Christ
--- In [email protected], "William J. Kammerer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
After all, take a look at
> the subscribers to EDI-L, who go into conniptions when their e-
mail IDs
> are shown in the clear on mailing list archives. I think that it's
sort
> of counter-productive to hide from others - you never know what
> opportunities will arise serendipitously simply by a stranger
contacting
> you by e-mail based on something she's read with your address on
it. You
> would think that, of all people, a "galvanizing provocateur" like
myself
> would be the most likely to get hate mail from cranks because my e-
mail
> ID is freely available, but I don't.
>
.
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