Re: Poster to this lists email address not obfuscated? If so it makes this list a heaven for spam bots...:-(
wow you're lucky that you only receive 1 to 2 spam emails per day...I myself receive 100-200 spam emails per day and now that I've posted to this list that number will probably increase...but oh well...Gmails spam filter does a great job and so I guess it really doesn't matter if my email address gets harvested by even more spam bots...and btw, how could people not like gmails conversation model? :P I love it, especially for mailing lists because it makes following the postings really easy, just click the first post in the mailing list "thread" in the gmail webmail interface and then you get a easy to follow interface of all the replies (although sometimes if a replys format differs greatly from the others it will appear to be a seperate conversation..but that happens rarely so I can't complain :-) )
On 3/18/06, kamaraju kusumanchi <raju.mailinglists@gmail.com> wrote:
Hex Star wrote:
> Hi, I've noticed that in the archive of this list, the posts I made
> publicly contain my full email address instead of it being obfuscated
> like on other lists (e.g. they change email addresses in the archive
> to something like user[at]domain[dot]com or user domain com, etc) it's
> fully displayed in its original format making it perfect for being
> picked up by spam bots...shouldn't the emai addresses in the debian
> archives for all the lists be obfuscated so that spam bots can't pick
> up the email addresses? I for one already have enough spam...:-/ :-(
There are two choices here. Either obfuscate or do not obfuscate. Both
choices have their advantages and disadvantages. Either of them is a
right choice, at the same time either of them is wrong. Usually the list
manager chooses one and sticks with it.
Obfuscation:
1) Could be bad if some other person wants to contact the OP. If the
email addresses are obfuscated, it would be hard/impossible to reach the OP.
2) Even if you make the addresses show up as email_id at domain dot com,
there is no guarantee that spammers will not harvest it. They can have
their bots tuned in such a way so as to recognize that, xxx at xxx dot
com is an email address. Same thing applies no matter what the
obfuscation procedure is.
No Obfuscation:
1) Spammers can harvest it. But at the same time, if someone wants to
contact the OP, it is very much possible.
I think the list masters went with 'No Obfuscation' and are just
sticking with it (since that is the way it has been for many years and
the alternative is not foolproof).
To avoid spam I use the following steps:
1) use a separate gmail address for all the mailing lists. A separate
gmail address would be better since gmail spam filter is not fool proof
and you do not want to loose important email into spam folder.
2) Let gmail filter it for you. Their spam filters are trained from all
the gmail addresses and not just from your email ID.
3) But since gmail's conversation view is not very convenient to read a
high volume mailing list such as d-u, pop the emails into your favorite
client such as thunderbird
4) Use adaptive junk mail controls in thunderbird to filter the spam again
Result :- I get around 1 or 2 (maximum 2) junk emails per day out of
around 300 emails (99.33% effective!) that I receive from various
mailing lists.
hth
raju
--
http://kamaraju.googlepages.com/cornell-bazaar
http://groups.google.com/group/cornell-bazaar/about
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact
listmaster@lists.debian.org
Reply to: