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Re: [OM] email address posted in the body

Subject: Re: [OM] email address posted in the body
From: Jan Steinman <Jan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2009 09:33:40 -0800
> From: Chris Barker <ftog AT threeshoes DOT net>
>
> I have just looked at lists.tako.de and the email addresses are
> obfuscated.
>
> What am I missing?


These don't look obfuscated to me:
        http://lists.tako.de/mbox/Olympus-OM/2009-01

I got there by Googling for "Olympus mailing list". It was the first  
hit. Then I clicked on list archives, then I clicked on the first mbox  
link. Surely, spammers can find it as well.

There are 65 matches to your email address in just the first month of  
2009, about two-thirds of which are in message headers -- which you  
put there by posting -- rather than message bodies -- which we put  
there by quoting. (I didn't do an exact count.) And there are more  
than 100 archive files, each of which conceivably has similar stats.

Then, just for fun, I put your email address directly into Google. The  
number 1 hit, with the email address in plain text for all to see and  
harvest, was http://www.threeshoes.net. (I note that you put spaces  
around the "@" and ".", but if Google can figure it out, don't you  
think the spammers can?)

I think you need to do some housekeeping before complaining about how  
others sweep the floor. I suggest a form-based contact page, with  
absolutely no mention of your email, obfuscated or not. That is the  
tried-n-true way of keeping spambots from getting your email address  
from your website. A one-line regular expression can harvest "Jon @  
YoYoDyne . com" and turn it into "Joe@xxxxxxxxxxxx" (Take that one,  
spammers! :-)

The only sure way to keep your address out of the hands of spammers is  
to never post to an archived email list. So either we start a campaign  
to eliminate the archives (which I would personally oppose), or we  
stop being obsessive about incidental exposure of email addresses in  
message bodies.

It may also be possible for Thomas to make the archives accessible  
only via password. That's how GNU Mailman works. Spending our energy  
campaigning for that seems like a much better return on  
bitchvestment! :-)

But even then, if you're in the address book of a compromised Windows  
machine that is being used to propagate spam, they've got your address  
-- even if you never used it for anything but one email to contact the  
person with the compromised machine.

It's infuriating! I agree! But it's better on your blood pressure if  
you accept things you cannot change, no matter how infuriating.

:::: When you change the way you look at things, the things you look  
at change. -- Wayne Dyer ::::
:::: Jan Steinman <http://www.EcoReality.org> ::::



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