Re: NNTP servers

On 2005-12-20, Hans-Christoph Wirth penned:
> Marc Tardif writes:
>> 
>> However, I tend to use another email address to prevent spammers
>> from automatically racking my email address. For example, I tend to
>> use [email protected]. Isn't that a common practice? Why
>> would news.individual.net care so much about the From address?
>
> It is common practice to not use faked addresses:

It's fairly common practice to use faked addresses.  Whether or not
it's the best practice is another question.

> 1. It's not 100% safe for the reader how to reconstruct the
> "correct" address, or whether it should be corrected at all

I don't see the problem here.  The author can provide instructions in
the body of the email for un-munging the address.  Or not, if they
really don't care if anyone can figure it out.

> 2. There is no safe way for the writer to construct an email address
> which can be guaranteed to not ever becoming a valid address

A lot of people have their own domains.  They can be sure that a
munged email address using their own domain won't go to another user.

> 3. It is uncomfortable for the replying person, who just decided to
> take the time and write an answer to a posting, to do more than
> pressing the reply key

Sounds good to me!  They should be following up in the newsgroup,
anyway, in the vast majority of cases.  I want people to think long
and hard before emailing me personally because of a newsgroup posting.

> 4. If the unchanged address is used, this creates additional effort
> for third parties (postmasters of the faked domains or people owning
> the apprently invalid address) and for the replying person (who must
> resend the bounced mail, at which time it is probably not trivial to
> see the particular posting again in order to make a better guess on
> the address).

I'm sympathetic to your argument about extra work for third parties.
As I've mentioned, I want the replying person to have to think about
whether or not they really want to reply to me personally, and I would
prefer that they give up and post to the group.

For the record, my address is actually valid, but I purposely chose a
username that looks like it might be invalid.  It reduces the number
of personal mails I get from newsgroups dramatically, which is just
the way I like it.

-- 
monique

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http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html



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