[Mailman-Users] Farmed addresses from text archive?

Warren Woodward scratch at xmission.com
Fri Jul 30 16:52:44 CEST 2004


A subscriber of one of our client's lists today noted that his email 
address had been farmed by spammers from the list archives.  While the 
archives are indeed public, they had relied on the security of mailman's 
paranthetical email address manipulation -- which obviously works like a 
charm -- not noticing that the 'downloadable version' was a straight text 
file that contained unaltered addresses.  To their credit, I had managed 
to overlook this fact for years now, myself.

What do people do to prevent this on their servers?  The list owner would 
like to keep the archives public while protecting his subscribers.  Seems 
to me that we should make the "downloadable version" optional, or perhaps 
force a zip of its contents to make is less bot friendly?  Have I 
overlooked some options, as usual?

 -- 
warren woodward
XMission DSL
Domo/Mailman
warrenw at xmission.com
(801) 303-0819
(877) XMISSION

 "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachments by men
of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
:- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, 1928

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
:-Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania





More information about the Mailman-Users mailing list