Re: Spam?

Eric said:
> I agree. It's probably just a single simple setting that needs to be
> changed, so I don't see much cause for offhand dismissals or debate. We
> have a chance to remove one vector, if only a fairly small one, by which
> spammers can get their email list lifeblood.
>
> Why not take it? The effort involved is comparatively slight, and it
> only serves to encourage participation in SWN. (And that's a good
> thing.) After all, we are a community served by having many and
> knowledgeable members -- and to dismiss the more spam-hating ones out of
> what appears to be just laziness is... just bad.

My objection is not to the idea of taking extra effort; I think anyone
accusing the list admin, or the membership/leadership of Seattle Wireless
of laziness is laughably misguided. But anyone who thinks that this sort
of measure is even *slightly* effective is naive, and wasting time
complaining about the lack of ineffective security is worse than
pointless, it's counter-productive.

1. Spammers are going to get your email address. Whether by harvesting it
from a compromised Windows box's address book, watching email traffic over
a peering point, scraping it from a web page or newsgroup posting or
mailing list, buying it from someone else, whatever - if you use email,
your address is going to get on a spammer's list. Getting upset about it
does nothing to the spammer, wastes time and adds stress on the people you
perhaps wrongly accuse of causing the problem, and raises your blood
pressure.

2. If you're still thinking in terms of "protecting your address", go back
and read 1. again. I'll wait.

3. Even assuming for the sake of argument that 1 isn't a given - and
speaking as a long-experienced mail administrator, I assure you it is -
the address-hiding measures in MailMan are also ineffective. The only way
it works at all is to restrict viewing the membership to the admin only -
and even then, it only works for people who never post. The address
munging inarchives is only partially effective; most people include their
email address in their signature, and it doesn't hide that at all. But,
more importantly, any recipient of list messages gets the addresses in
clear text. And even small, low-traffic lists, if they're publically
viewable/reachable, end up with one or more members who join and never
post a single message, even lists where lurking makes no sense. What's
more, I've seen a single address join every single public list on a server
- even where lists are duplicates - within five minutes, and never post a
single message to any of them. Is that supposed to be a compulsive lurker?

Now, really, guys, the amount of time spent venting about this issue is
considerably more than the issue is worth. Spam is worth fighting, but
this particular battle was lost a long time ago. Save the energy for
battles that are worth the effort.

-- 
Matt Beland
[email protected]
http://www.rearviewmirror.org

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