[Mailman-Users] Spams directed to list owner.

[Dragon]

Ron Brogden sent the message below at 12:47 7/11/2006:

>Most lists seem to display the real address anyway so I am not sure how much
>this obfuscation step really helps:
>
>http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
>
>"Mailman-Users list run by barry at python.org, brad at python.org, 
>mm-admin05
>at equinephotoart.com"
>
>I doubt that spammers are incapable of automating searches for "foo @
>domain.name".
---------------- End original message. ---------------------

Such "obfuscation" is virtually useless. It is a pretty trivial 
exercise to write a Perl program  to collect e-mail addresses from 
such schemes (I could do it in a matter of less than an hour to cover 
all of the common variations). Same goes for all sorts of other 
schemes that try to hide the e-mail address.

Since there is little that can be done to prevent a determined person 
from harvesting addresses and nothing that can be done to prevent 
spammers from sending, the best tactic that can be used today is a 
good bayesian spam filter. But that is only part of the solution, it 
also requires a conscientious administrator who is willing to take 
the time to train it on both ham and spam.

Dragon

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