Re: [hylafax-users] problems with mailing-list

[Lee Howard <faxguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 2003.11.07 15:46 Stephen Arnold wrote:

> Since it was Google Groups you meant, I'm not sure there's anything
> that
> can be done, short of stopping the usenet reflector...
>
> Anybody?

I think that it's our responsibility to do all that we reasonably can 
to prevent web pages that we host from being harvest-fields for bulk 
e-mail addresses.  The particular obfuscation method that you see in 
the HylaFAX archives now was chosen.  The cost of that particular 
obfuscation method is that we can't e-mail directly to an individual 
hylafax-user based solely on what we see in the archives.  I.e., now I 
can't go back into the archives and follow up on some problem that they 
may have explained, and so if they don't read hylafax-users anymore, I 
may never be able to reach them.  I think that's a reasonable price to 
pay, although I truly wish it weren't necessary.

As we don't control Google's website we can't do much about their 
privacy policies.  In theory the hylafax-users list could obfuscate the 
original poster's e-mail address by having all mail coming from the 
list address, but that would prevent us from privately e-mailing each 
other, and some of the information we share (i.e. logs containing TSI 
and dialstrings) really shouldn't always be publicized.  So if I want 
to help you out and I need logs from you, I certainly understand it if 
you send me those logs privately.  I think that as a whole we all enjoy 
that opportunity.  The cost of that opportunity is the risk of whatever 
privacy policy another hylafax-user may have.  Is that registrant 
providing a web-browseable archive without e-mail address obfuscation?  
Is that user reaping addresses directly and selling them?  So at 
present we need to remind ourselves that privacy is lost with publicity 
and voice any complaints to that user that may violate our personal 
privacy wishes (in this case Google).

hylafax-users is a public list.  Don't post private information here if 
you don't want that information becoming public.  That even goes for 
your e-mail address as much as it goes for your credit card numbers.

If you or your ISP are not already filtering for spam, then you 
certainly should be.  We cannot reasonably expect to keep our e-mail 
addresses as confidential as our credit card numbers.  Following the 
lead that HylaFAX.org made in using SpamAssassin to filter spam from 
the hylafax-users list, I am now using SpamAssassin 2.60 on a number of 
different mail domains.  I am very happy with SpamAssassin and would 
highly recommend it to anyone.  It's sad that we need to take active 
steps like that to filter out spam from our mailboxes so that we can 
actually find the few morsels of real communication that may be in 
there... but that's the reality today and so is it for the foreseeable 
future.

Lee.

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