[Mailman-Users] Wishlist Items

[John W Baxter]

At 8:17 -0700 8/13/2002, Chuq Von Rospach wrote:
>On 8/13/02 1:29 AM, "Nigel Metheringham"
><Nigel.Metheringham at dev.InTechnology.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> So "Wile E Spammer" of "Evil Spammers Incorporated" writes a little
>> script that does an invite subscribe of a few hundred throusand of his
>> "friends" with an invitation note of whatever crap he is sending out
>> this week.
>>
>> Isn't this basically just another form of open relay?
>
>Not necessarily, but...
>
>Most web sites now have some form of forward to a friend capability. I'm
>working on implementing one now for a project. If you do it carefully, you
>can avoid putting yourself open to abuse. If you don't....
>
>The intent is okay. The original request put it too far into the approval
>chain, though. Some way of letting a person know about the list is good.
>Signing them up isn't. Building your setup so it can be hijacked is really
>bad.

I never use those "forward to a friend" (or soon to be former friend)
things, and cringe when friends aim them at me.  I'm too lazy to look into
privacy policies deeply enough to know what's going to happen to the
addresses and the information that someone thought someone else would be
interested in xxx.

When I sign up for something myself, I use a unique trackable address, so I
know when I've been sold.  (OK, I can't tell a leak from a sale...I'm not
exactly sure yet which is worse.)

I *might* actually use a to-a-friend thing at Apple's site, as long as Chuq
is involved, since I know he's serious about doing these things right.
(But his project might be elsewhere, of course.)

  --John (who also doesn't do online greeting cards)
-- 
John Baxter   jwblist at olympus.net      Port Ludlow, WA, USA