[lnkForumImage]
TotalShareware - Download Free Software

Confronta i prezzi di migliaia di prodotti.
Asp Forum
 Home | Login | Register | Search 


 

Forums >

comp.lang.ruby

Re: Email Harvesting

Austin Ziegler

10/21/2003 5:35:00 PM

On Sun, 19 Oct 2003 21:30:21 +0900, Ralph P?llath wrote:
> Hi,
>> I've been receiving a lot of Swen emails to my ruby-talk address
>> lately. This mailing alias is rather new and so my guess is that
>> this list is actively being harvested for emails. Is there
>> something we can do to fix this? This is getting boring, my email
>> bandwidth quota is being eaten by these goddam 150kb emails.
> That's because this list is mirrored to usenet [...] with all
> email addresses intact. I also find this annoying, and wasn't
> aware of the fact when I subscribed (probably because I didn't
> read the fine print).

This has nothing to do with it. I've got a dedicated usenet address
and it gets far less spam than any other address I have (and this
was even true when I was far more active in newsgroups than I am
now). People like to blame this on the news gateway, but that's not
it at all.

Look instead to web archives (e.g., www.ruby-talk.org).

-austin
--
austin ziegler * austin@halostatue.ca * Toronto, ON, Canada
software designer * pragmatic programmer * 2003.10.21
* 13.31.21


3 Answers

Nikolai Weibull

10/21/2003 8:19:00 PM

0

* Austin Ziegler <austin@halostatue.ca> [Oct, 21 2003 19:40]:
> Look instead to web archives (e.g., www.ruby-talk.org).
yes, this is also not very good. i'm betting this generates a lot more
problems than the usenet stuff. i don't think spammers bother too much
with parsing emails from usenet. would it be possible for someone to
take care of this?
nikolai

--
::: name: Nikolai Weibull :: aliases: pcp / lone-star / aka :::
::: born: Chicago, IL USA :: loc atm: Gothenburg, Sweden :::
::: page: www.pcppopper.org :: fun atm: gf,lps,ruby,lisp,war3 :::
main(){printf(&linux["\021%six\012\0"],(linux)["have"]+"fun"-97);}

Ryan Dlugosz

10/21/2003 9:06:00 PM

0

Nikolai Weibull said:
> with parsing emails from usenet. would it be possible for someone to
> take care of this?

My $.02 = Attempting to hide all the emails does more harm than good... it
really only makes it harder for people to contact you who have a genuine
reason to do so (i.e. - with a Ruby question). As far as spam goes, not
publishing your email address certainly helps, but the first time a friend
or relative sends you an electronic "greeting card" you're sunk.

Perhaps the effort would be better spent on improving anti-spam systems...
Personally, I find the Bayesian-ish approach of bogofilter to be quite
good. I catch ~100 spams per day & only one or two get through. More
attention (and contributions) to projects like this would improve the
situation much more than going through web archives & mangling email
addresses.

-Ryan

--
Ryan Dlugosz
ryan@dlugosz.net

http://d...

Nikolai Weibull

10/22/2003 8:45:00 AM

0

* Ryan Dlugosz <ryan@dlugosz.net> [Oct, 22 2003 10:26]:
> Nikolai Weibull said:
> > with parsing emails from usenet. would it be possible for someone to
> > take care of this?
>
> My $.02 = Attempting to hide all the emails does more harm than good... it
> really only makes it harder for people to contact you who have a genuine
> reason to do so (i.e. - with a Ruby question). As far as spam goes, not
> publishing your email address certainly helps, but the first time a friend
> or relative sends you an electronic "greeting card" you're sunk.
>
> Perhaps the effort would be better spent on improving anti-spam systems...
> Personally, I find the Bayesian-ish approach of bogofilter to be quite
> good. I catch ~100 spams per day & only one or two get through. More
> attention (and contributions) to projects like this would improve the
> situation much more than going through web archives & mangling email
> addresses.
Hey, I don't have problems capturing spam, I just don't want it reaching
me, period. Parsing out email addresses does make it harder to respond
to people, yes, and that is often not a problem. If you're mailing to a
mailing list, you expect people to reply to the mailing list, not the
email address you sent from. And if people really want to contact you,
they can probably understand the parsed email, such as
ruby-talk at pcppopper dot org
or some less obvious parsing,
nikolai

--
::: name: Nikolai Weibull :: aliases: pcp / lone-star / aka :::
::: born: Chicago, IL USA :: loc atm: Gothenburg, Sweden :::
::: page: www.pcppopper.org :: fun atm: gf,lps,ruby,lisp,war3 :::
main(){printf(&linux["\021%six\012\0"],(linux)["have"]+"fun"-97);}