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Re: Eliminating Junk E-mail for List members



At 22:30 +0200 on 03/11/1999, Nadav Har'El wrote:


>I use a much simpler method on the Ivrix mailing-list archives: I simply
>convert *everything* that looks like an email address to the string
>"email@hidden". Granted, this way people will not be able to find any
>emails in the archives, but I'm not sure this is a real problem. To talk
>to mailing-list subscribers, people should probably join the list and mail
to it.

I can think of two reasons why your global filter is less than 
satisfactory (this was discussed in another mailing list I'm on):

1. Emails in mailing lists are not always the address of the sender.
    For example, I can imagine that if someone published the email addresses
    of stores that sell PCs with linux pre-installed, it would be an on-topic
    subject for this list, and it would be a real shame if someone ran into
    this in the archives and they were all converted to email@hidden...

2. Formatting reasons. Sometimes we format data, like lists of contacts,
    assuming the readers use a fixed-width font. Shortening e-mails tends to
    ruin such formatting. This means that your hiding mechanism is best done
    with a string of the same length as the original.

I also have reason to disagree with your assumption that one never 
has to contact someone from the list personally. Suffice it to say 
that if I see someone on the list whose name is "Moshe Israeli", and 
I want to ask him the simple question "are you the Moshe Israeli I 
know from Moshav Ledugma?" (Happened to me, in my own mailing 
list...), you wouldn't want me to post to the entire list. There are 
less eccentric examples - you saw someone is using LinuxPPC, and you 
want to ask him whether he may have a source for used Mac parts in 
the Beer-Sheva area. Things like that. Don't prevent people from 
doing things within reason just because there are spammers out in the 
world.

In egroups.com they limit access to e-mails in two forms. The ones in 
the "To:" are covered by a URL that leads to an form or page where 
you can email the person, and you can only go to a "To:" link a 
limited number of times per day, or something like that. And other 
emails in the text are covered with a change of one letter. Another 
mailing list I'm on simply replaces the character "@" with another 
character throughout the text.

Herouth

--
Herouth Maoz, B.Sc.                Work:      herouth@oumail.openu.ac.il
                                    Home:       herutma@telem.openu.ac.il
HOME PAGE:                            http://telem.openu.ac.il/~herutma/
Internet technical assistant              Open University, Telem Project

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