[Mailman-Developers] Re: subscription confirmations (was Re: [Mailman-Users] [ANNOUNCE] Mailman 2.1 alpha 2)

[Gerald Oskoboiny]

On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 05:47:24PM -0700, Chuq Von Rospach wrote:
> On 7/16/01 5:38 PM, "Gerald Oskoboiny" <gerald@impressive.net> wrote:
> 
> > Fetching a URL into my local http cache doesn't cause a virus to
> > be executed or anything else bad to happen, and I wouldn't use
> > software where that kind of thing would be possible anyway.
> 
> You're speaking both sides of the argument, Gerald, because this whole
> discussion started with "don't do it this way, or you could cause me to
> automatically be subscribed to a mailing list". Yet you're saying it's okay
> to fetch it, because evidently if you fetch it, nothing bad will happen.
> 
> So is it a good thing or a bad thing? You seem to be claiming both at the
> same time.

I guess I should have written "or anything else really bad to happen";
I consider viruses and autoexecing executables to be much more
dangerous than the occasional errant mailing list subscription.

I am prepared to deal with a few bogus subscriptions here and there
(of course, I'll bug each of them to get fixed as I encounter them),
but it would be really bad for mailman-backed lists to operate this
way, especially as mailman continues to take over the world...

But once again, this prefetching business is just an example,
please don't focus on that exclusively: what I am really asking
is simply for Mailman to comply with the HTTP specs.

-- 
Gerald Oskoboiny <gerald@impressive.net>
http://impressive.net/people/gerald/