[Mailman-Users] Autoresponder and privacy

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Clare Redstone writes:

 > How insecure? Are they more vulnerable than a members-only Yahoo or Google
 > group for example?

Probably a little more vulnerable, for social reasons.  Your members-
only password at Yahoo/Google is your personal mail password; people
probably protect those fairly well (although often enough dinner
guests can read them off the post-in on the monitory in the corner ;-).
Mailman subscription passwords tend to be easier to guess.

 > Are they protected from search engines?

Yes.

 > Would someone have to make a deliberate effort to hack in to read
 > the archive

Yes.

 > or could someone come across it by accident, say through a search
 > engine?

No.

 > I think if it would take someone with some technical knowledge,
 > deliberately looking for it to get in, that would be safe enough.

Stealing a password doesn't take technical knowledge, but it clearly
takes evil intent.

 > One thing I'm suggesting is that people could set up and email
 > account with a nickname so they wouldn't so easily be identified.

This is a good idea any time you want to preserve a modicum of privacy
on the 'net.