[Asterisk-Users] Mailing lists and spam

[Steve Murphy]

Hello, everyone.

I've proven to myself, via throw-away addresses, that individuals and
robots sift thru archives and mailing list subscription lists, gathering
addresses to sell on CD's to spammers. No list is immune, especially if
it or its archives are available over the web. I've been spammed within
a very short while of my address appearing on a posted message.

If you go to http://lists.digium.com

you will find that you are probably on all of the 3 lists specified:
announce, users, and dev.

I suggest you all take a moment, and "Visit subscriber list" for each
one, and click on your own email, and have the password for each one
sent to you.

Then, edit your options; some may wish digests; I suggest all of you
"Conceal yourself from subscriber list". Because, in this case, even if
you don't post, you'll get spammed. It may already be too late, but,
better late than never, right?

It'd be nice if the mailman guys (and most other list server software),
would disguise or hide people's emails in the letters sent out and in
the archives. There are several methods for doing this, and perhaps a
rotating mix of them could be used. The collection software will
probably easily decode all these methods soon, if they haven't already.
Perhaps mailman someday will include some sort of mediation capability
where, if you wish to go "offline" on a subject with someone, you will
be able to post to an alias on the list server, which will forward the
message to you. If it only does this for list members, these aliases
would be useless to spammers.

And, make sure to leave out your signatures if you want to keep your
spam levels low. Right now, it doesn't much matter, as the "from"
address is included in the header for each message... but, then again, I
guess web robots could collect phone numbers for telemarketers and
addresses for postal marketing, couldn't they? Wouldn't that be worth
something?

Mark-- I suggest that you hide the subscription lists from the web
pages... just as a service to your list members. Also, if monthly
reminders are sent to all the members, they may find it easier to access
their settings on the 3 mailing lists.

murf


-- 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20030304/1da53492/attachment.pgp