[CF-Devel] ot: list archive/spam concern

[Mark Wedel]

Rick Tanner wrote:
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      On Mon, 23 Apr 2001, Preston Crow wrote:
     
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      > I'm concerned that the archive of this list exposes email addresses to
     
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      > spammers.  The issue is that spammers will run web robots to search for
     
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      > email addresses, and they will find all of ours in the archives.
     
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      > Is the archive something we control?
     
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      Yes.
     
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      There is an option in Mailman that hides the senders email address
     
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      (replacing it with the list address)
     
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      I still need to do a little more investigating to see how this works,
     
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      exactly.  For instance, does it just "hide" the email address in the
     
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      archive, or in the actual message that gets sent to the list.  Will
     
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      turning this option on break anything, etc.
     
     
 I know that mhonarc (which is just a archive -> html converter) just re-writes
the address when it creates the html archive.

 I would think that mailman would probably do something similar.

 The only disadvantage of this system is that if someone is viewing the archive
on real-time, they can't directly respond to a user.  But I don't know how often
that happens, so that may not be a very big deal.
 
 Also, if possible, it should be done such that the crossfire-.... addresses
don't get changed, so people who do do a followup on the website have it do the
right thing.  Also, I believe that the mailing list themselves are set up to
prevent spamming, as you need to be on the list to send mail.

 To me right now, the biggest cause of spam is the defunct mailing lists at
ifi.no, as those don't do spam filtering.