Matti Aarnio enscribed thusly:
> "Michael H. Warfield" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote quite good points about
> the futility of avoiding spam
> with scrambled addresses ...
> ... but I continue a bit more:
> At postmastering VGER's lists I see occasionally people sending this
> type of requests to Majordomo:
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <-- some static template, no doubt
> subscribe linux-kernel
> People who are so scared of receiving spam that they scramble their
> email setup should be aware that things like Majordomo ARE NOT SMART
> ENOUGH to recognize how to demangle the addresses. If they were,
> people fishing for addresses would use similar demanglers...
> (No doubt those fishers have some such demanglers for most common
> types of manglers, anyway. Or rather, they accept that perhaps 90%
> of the addresses they collect are rubbish, but the volume of that
> remanining 10% is sufficient for them.)
Oh! Don't I know it! For a long time I was managing the mailing
lists at Internet Security Systems (iss.net). That includes the ntsecurity
mailing list with about 6,000 subscribers. It never ceases to amaze
me, the depths of human stupidity. Some people must think these programs
are telepathic! They obviously think the things must be able to read
their minds...
All of the lists at ISS are also set with the subscription policy
set to "confirm" (we were having Newt Gingrich subscribed to all of our
lists at least once a month - I really don't think he was interested...).
That get's even funnier when mixed in with Mime and/or the random acts
of terrorism that Microsoft mailers commit. I see things come through
were people are complaining that they can't subscribe, and, what it is, is
that they can READ! We give them explicit instructions in the confirmation
message and then BOLD the message that, if they don't follow those
instructions, THEIR SUBSCRIPTION WILL FAIL. They still don't follow
the instructions and wonder why they can't subscribe...
To quote Heinlein... "Never ascribe to malice what can be
explained by human stupidity"...
This has gotten way off topic for the list (even if it does relate
to list management), and is probably boring the crap out of a lot of readers,
so I'm dropping back into lurk mode and letting it rest...
Bye....
> > Mike
> > Michael H. Warfield | (770) 985-6132 | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> /Matti Aarnio <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Mike
--
Michael H. Warfield | (770) 985-6132 | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(The Mad Wizard) | (770) 925-8248 | http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
NIC whois: MHW9 | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
PGP Key: 0xDF1DD471 | possible worlds. A pessimist is sure of it!
