Fresh Email Lists at Unbelievable Prices

From: Jay West <jwest_at_classiccmp.org>
Date: Sun May 5 21:30:40 2002

> Don't do that. I suffered the same "coincidence". No offense, but
> anybody who thinks that can't happen is playing ostrich.
No offense, but I'm not "playing ostrich", my sentiments were based on my
experience as a professional sendmail administrator. One who deals with
tracking down spam on a daily basis and knowing how the spammers work. I get
paid for that. My pessimism isn't ignorance, it's experience. On the other
hand, from my experience, I'm well adept at identifiying "chicken littles".

I'm not saying that your address didn't get somehow harvested from the list.
However, I am saying that you shouldn't jump to conclusions as there are
many MUCH more likely reasons for your increase in spam than posting to a
private list. As an example... saying that you only use a single address for
this list that is different from all other email addresses you use, and that
you haven't gotten an address harvesting virus since getting the address,
and that you don't allow java or cookies in your browser - then one of my
first conclusions would be that your email address got harvested here. But
from what was said in his previous post, his email address being harvested
from here would be WAY down low on the suspect list.

And then posts like this always spread like wildfire as another user or two
chimes in "Hey, I just joined here and started getting spam too!" Geeze -
look at the sample size people.

> Our archives
> are easily available, with addresses intact and in clear,
As are a lot of mailing list archives. See comments below

> _instructions_ on the website telling anybody who cares exactly how to
> harvest the list. I would really like to see that particular piece of
> help go away.
And how should I make that help go away - should I contact the author of
majordomo and ask him to change his program? Why stop at him, maybe I should
write a letter to all the authors of mailman, majordomo, listserv, as well
as all the archive programs like google, htdig, etc. Yes, lets get them to
take that functionality out of the program. The simple answer is, taking
that out of the featureset (by them globally or me locally) solves nothing.
The public archives and search engines (not just mine, but others, and all
the google like things out there) snatch that info up regularly either way.
And if you were thinking that I should just remove the help item showing one
how to "harvest the list" as you put it.... think about it. The only people
that will stop is the 10 year old kids. Anyone trying to really harvest
something knows much better ways to do it anyways.

Jay West
Received on Sun May 05 2002 - 21:30:40 BST