At 06:18 PM 7/28/2002 +0300, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote the following: >The idea crossed my mind due to a relevant post to another list. > >I think there should be a stricter policy regarding the list's archives. > >I have got a couple of spam messages due to my >subscription in this list. > >I can understand that there has to be somewhere an archive of the list's >messages but I think it could be password-protected so that spam-bots >can't get access there. > >Furthermore, if we want to "promote" our list, we could make available >a few sample posts with the e-mail information stripped off.
If you check with all the bulk e-mail programs, the e-mail addresses are harvested from USENET (far and away the largest source of addresses) seconded by web pages with mailto links. Getting addresses from mailing lists is now just to much work especially since LISTSERV (the largest mailing list manager) doesn't send e-mail addresses to people who request an index listing -- the method used in the past to obtain a list of e-mail addresses. The robots that travel the web use web pages and USENET postings. I asked Marlene to add our list to mail-archive way back in 2000 or so just after a change in the mailing list hosting site lost about 6 months or so of our archives. There was a period of time when members were interested in answers to questions but because the archives weren't keep it was almost impossible to refer back to the previous methods that people had used to solve a particular problem. This was at a time when many of us were using registry "hacks" to maintain our Win 95. I liked the idea that mail-archive would keep records forever so asked Marlene to add our mailing list to it. To access a mailing list that is archived is just about impossible because most mailing lists require a confirmed e-mail address for the subscriber. Robots just don't work this way. For web-based archives like the mail-archive, the robot would have to access the archive and then select message by message. Most robots just select pages that are indexed. In addition, the mail archive also uses the meta tag [META NAME="robots" CONTENT="noindex"]. I can guarantee that my e-mail address has been harvested from my web page and also USENET postings, not from mailing lists that I belong too and not from the mail-archive web site. -- Gerry Boyd ============= PCWorks Mailing List ================= Don't see your post? Check our posting guidelines & make sure you've followed proper posting procedures, http://pcworkers.com/rules.htm Contact list owner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Unsubscribing and other changes: http://pcworkers.com =====================================================
