[Mailman-Developers] Interesting study -- spam on postedaddresses...

[John Morton]

On Friday 22 February 2002 18:58, Dale Newfield wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Feb 2002, John Morton wrote:
> > Ok. Show me a solution
>
> The point is that adding layer after layer of temporary solutions doesn't
> add up to an actual solution any more than not adding those layers.  All
> it does add is more complexity to manage, more code to write and test,
> more annoyance to anyone trying to use the system, and more potential
> points of failure. 

This depends on just how temporary your 'solution' turns out to be, and
it's level of complexity and usability. I don't think anyone has really 
advocate any really kludgy hacks so far.

> Separate archives (public stripped of anything that
> looks like an email address, private unmodified), and an equivilant "give
> me archive access" path to the subscription path (through email) as has
> been suggested seems to be the best solution yet.

Not bad; it looks fairly easy to implement. I'd build the archive access
to be just like regular list access, except delivery is turned off by 
default, to keep it simple. 

The problem is that if you accept that those nefarious agents of mass email 
will start auto-joining lists and plunder the private archive and message 
feed for addresses sometime in the future, then you have to implement another 
layer of hackery to detect and block that sort of thing. Does that make your 
suggestion any less of an actual solution? :-)

I'd still go as far as adding per user configurability for address display so 
people can adjust the option to suit there own level of hysteria.

John