[Catalog-sig] The "Softpedia" spam

[exarkun at twistedmatrix.com]

On 11:33 pm, ziade.tarek at gmail.com wrote:
>2010/5/7 "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de>:
>>>If they use PubSubHubbub, maybe we could set up a black list of
>>>subscribers people can manage at their level,
>>>if they reconstruct the emails by reading the RSS feed, maybe we
>>>should not publish this info (even with  the @ transformed into " at
>>>").
>>
>>I don't think we should stop announcing new releases on the web site,
>>and, as long as we do, people can setup automated actions. People keep
>>asking for being notified, so I don't think the need for that will go
>>away, either. IOW, it is a good thing that automated reactions to new
>>releases are actually possible.
>
>No one asked for stopping announcing the new releases. Having those 
>automated
>reaction is of course a good thing !
>
>I just said that making it more secure would prevent spammers.
>
>e.g. differentiate "people" from spammers.
>>
>>Now, with respect to these specific email messages: I agree they are
>>spam, and would support to see that stopped. However, I don't think
>>technical means are the right reaction. Instead, we should send them 
>>an
>>email message asking them to stop. Feel free to approach them.
>
>I don't think asking a spammer to stop spamming is the real solution.

Softpedia is not an anonymous entity in an unknown legal jurisdiction. 
I'm not going to claim to know what the best thing to do here is, but 
asking Softpedia to stop doing this isn't like replying to a 411 email 
asking to be taken off their mailing list.  There's at least a small 
chance that they care about their brand and reputation, and if not, 
another chance that legal action can be brought against them.
>PyPI and the PSF should protect its pypi.python.org users as much as 
>possible,
>here, and I still think it has to be addressed by making it harder for 
>spammers
>to bother us.
>>Regards,
>>Martin
>
>
>
>--
>Tarek Ziadé | http://ziade.org
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