[Mailman-Developers] Interesting study -- spam on posted addresses...

[Chuq Von Rospach]

On 2/17/02 7:48 PM, "Larry McVoy" <lm@bitmover.com> wrote:

> Second, the point is that even if mailman is 100% perfect, it's not
> at all clear that that would result in even 1% less spam hitting home.
> If that's even remotely close, then it seems like efforts could be better
> spent on screening technology.

You can't assume your admins are going to want/have screening technology,
unless you build it into mailman. And I don't think Mailman can simply say
"hey, that's some other program's problem". We need to find ways to not
become an easy source for the harvester machines. I DO know from my sites
that addresses published ONLY as mailman admins get harvested and hit by
spam. 

To me, it's more an issue of "we can't be part of the problem", not "we're
the solution". I have a couple of admins who want their addresses removed
from all public pages -- which I've refused to do, because I think the need
for access by a user in trouble trumps the admin's privacy. I think at least
one of those admins has solved it by setting up an admin-specific account,
and redirecting it to /dev/null, which, if I ever definitely catch him doing
so, will get him in trouble...

But at the same time -- I don't blame him. And Mailman has a responsibility
to do something about that, the way we (as admins) have a responsibility ot
our users not to make them easy fodder for the harvesters by publishing
archives in an easy to harvest format...




-- 
Chuq Von Rospach (chuqui@plaidworks.com -- http://www.chuqui.com/)
Will Geek for hardware.

The Cliff's Notes Cliff's Notes on Hamlet:
    And they all died happily ever after