On Wed, Jan 07, 2009 at 05:42:42PM +1100, John Beckett wrote:
> 
> Chris Bannister wrote:
> >> * Remove any email addresses (do not quote the email address of
> >> the person to whom you are replying).

I did not write that.

> > I don't understand this. If you can scan the body, you can
> > scan the headers, or am I missing something?
> 
> If a spammer subscribes to the list, then yes, they can use the headers
> to harvest the email address of everyone who posts. However, our
> messages also end up on web pages where there are no mail headers.
> 
> By searching for old posts, we can see that all vim_use mail is archived
> at:
>     groups.google.com
>     tech.groups.yahoo.com
>     www.nabble.com
>     markmail.org
>     www.mail-archive.com
>     article.gmane.org

http://www.ii.com/internet/robots/procmail/qs/ notes:
"Tip:  At Gmane you can view the unmunged version of a message by
appending /raw to the message's URL. This is discussed in the Gmane
FAQ." 

Gmane FAQ: http://gmane.org/faq.php

> It so happens that each of these archives uses some method to obscure
> email addresses. However, next week, someone could decide that they

Even the "from:" header? You could argue that obscuring the from header
is a bad idea because there is then no chance of corresponding with that
poster. For example, I would welcome further correspondence from anyone
with something worthwhile to say, even if it was an old post in some
archive somewhere.

> Furthermore, there is good reason to believe that spammers pay to defeat
> captcha on Google Groups and Yahoo, etc. As profitable avenues for
> spammers dry up, who knows what they will do next? Perhaps they might
> pay for a system that harvests all the obscured email addresses from
> archived mailing lists.

Couldn't be that hard to scan for jjj at example dot com or variants
thereof. 

> Finally, I would recommend an application of common sense (this is not
> aimed at Chris). When replying to a public mailing list, it would be
> unwise to include anyone's home address and phone number. It's just

I snip out sigs anyway and would probably snip out an address and phone
number *but* I consider it *extremely* bad manners to edit someones
message to my liking and making it look as though that is what they
wrote. So, of course, I won't obfuscate anything anyone else wrote.

-- 
Chris.
======
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god
than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other
possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
                                           -- Stephen F Roberts

--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message from the "vim_use" maillist.
For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

Reply via email to