[ale]OT It begins...

[ChangingLINKS.com]

On Tuesday 27 January 2004 09:34, Jim Popovitch wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-01-27 at 06:06, Fulton Green wrote:
> > The Sympa mailing list engine ( www.Sympa.org ) claims to be able to
> > protect addresses by either the @/" AT " substitution paradigm or
> > JavaScript mangling.  
> 
> Knowing this, any harvesting program can do the inverse.

Speaking on behalf of spammers, "we" DON'T want to email those who go through 
the trouble to munge their email addresses. It takes too much time to write a 
the scripts to unmunge emails (when we could be sending them). 
Further, we know that once we unmunge, the ROI on those solved email addresses 
will be lower because the message has to overcome the recipient's disdain for 
unsolicited email. Finally, please recognize that "we" have been 
filtering .mil, .edu and .org since '96.
Your response would have been more practical if you had said "the spammer's 
harvesting programs will kick in your door, take your computer and steal your 
emails." (think virus based spam)

> > It can also add an additional level of protection
> > to web archives of the mailing list by requiring a form-generated cookie
> > to be eaten by the client before the archive can be seen.
> > 
> > However, I believe we're using Mailman ...
> > 
> 
> Mailman supports password protected archives.... BUT, this breaks
> htdig.  The best way I have seen is to use .htacess to restrict the
> archives.

We should NOT use .htacess to restrict the archives. The useful stuff that is 
written on the list is for the entire linux community and searchable via by 
Google (I see a response that says "allow google spiders so the content can 
be indexed in my future").

I am really having a difficult time believing that this can't be done. 
1. This is a LINUX forum with some self-proclaimed EXPERT programmers.
2. The local linux group claims to have already implemented such a system that 
has emails "indexable by search engines(not sure what the issue was there)".
3. I use similar technology when handling my data. 
Jim, help us out here. Research and find a reasonable solution or at least let 
those of us who can, do (in the absence of "can't" comments). :)

Your solution "use a special email address" is not acceptable. I am doing that 
now, and when I did it before, my email account x3 at ChangingLINKS.com 
eventually got overrun with spam. I realize that eventually the email address 
that I am using now to post will also be overrun. Ironically, I also realize 
that the only list that exposes me to volumes of spam is ALE.
We shall overcome.

-- 
Wishing you Happiness, Joy and Laughter,
Drew Brown
http://www.ChangingLINKS.com