[Mailman-Users] Automated Subscription Bots Inundating List Owners With Subscription Requests

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Lindsay Haisley writes:

 > On the other hand, most people get spam, and hate it, and can
 > appreciate that their own interests are served by having to jump
 > through a hoop or two to make sure that they're entering a bot-free
 > zone.

Sure, all of that is true, except for the implication that CAPTCHAs
and other complicated reverse Turing tests actually are effective
enough to be worth it.  As several people have pointed out, all you
really need to do is to make up your own trivial test that requires
actually understanding English.

It will keep 'bots out, but if somebody really wants you, they'll do
it themselves or pay somebody to do it.[1]  CAPTCHAs and PlayThru work
only because nobody really wants access to your piddly little list
anyway.

Footnotes: 
[1]  In fact, I bet a sufficiently smart ripoff artist could simply
VNC the Playthru to some other site that lots of people (speaking
loosely here) want to access (porn, gambling), and then relay the
solution back to the site they want access to.