[Mailman-Users] Re: [Mailman-Developers] "download the full raw archive"

[Chuq Von Rospach]

>Yup, but so does the old downloadable archive link, so I don't think
>this change /increases/ the spam harvesting potential.
>
>     MC> Even if I have the obscure_addresses Option set to YES, the
>     MC> e-mail addresses of public archives can be still harvested by
>     MC> various robots out there.
>
>I'm not sure what to do about it.


I'm putting all of my archives, search engine, etc, behind a security 
realm. They'll have to know where to find the acct/password, and type 
it in.

That shuts out all of the automated harvesters. If someone wants to 
manually come in try to harvest, you need to depend on being able to 
recognize it happening and deal with it on a case by case basis, but 
then, if you have an individual harvesting, they can always quietly 
subscribe to the lists and harvest the e-mail stream you deliver to 
them, -- and you'll never know it's happening.

so I don't worry about the manual harvester. First, it rarely 
happens. Second, if they have a clue you'll never catch them. Third, 
few have a clue and they're easy to find. And fourth, that kind of 
person is very rare. I'm worried about (a) keeping email addresses 
out of the global search engines where most harvesting happens, and 
(b) closing out the automated spider harvesters that do 99% of the 
rest of the harvesting.

and if you think about it, you can't find, much less stop, a 
harvester that subscribes to lists and sucks e-mail off the list 
server, so that's the most secure you can make a mail list. It makes 
no sense to try to make your archives MORE secure than you can make 
the list itself. So I focus on dealing wtih indiviual harvesters by 
alarms on suspicious activity in the archives, and let passwords lock 
out the bots, and that, to me, is about as good as you can expect, 
because it's as secure as your list itself is.

-- 
Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com)
Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com)

You seem a decent fellow. I hate to die.

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