On 29 Mar 2000, at 17:24, John Picken wrote:
> Web Harvesting precautions
>
> I am fairly new to managing lists with 3 currently running. I am
> setting up digests and also want to protect my list members. I am
> using Majordomo and have set who to closed and subscritions to either
> open,open+confirm or closed depending on the list, never auto. All
> have restricted post to list or list + digest.
>
> Should I be doing more to protect members Email addresses?
Suppressing the who - the subscriber list, is your best course of
action.
You cannot suppress the addresses of the subscribers who post to your
list from the view of other subscribers on the list. You can only
make sure that only subscribers see the addresses of other
subscribers. You place a trust upon every subscriber to not misuse
the information they can obtain from your list, such as the addresses
of the posting subscribers. If you discover any subscriber violates
your trust, you then take any disciplinary steps that you deem
necessary.
I once had a subscriber collect addresses of the posters of my
mailing list and then he mailed these subscribers a chain letter. He
mailed this chain letter using a different address than the one in
which he was subscribed to my mailing list. I knew he was sending
the chain letter to posters of my list because I got about three of
the chain letters to three different e-mail addresses I owned and
which had previously posted to the list. Plus I was getting
complaints from other posters of my list.
I later discovered the true identity of the subscriber who was
sending the offlist chain letters. I had to use deception and guile
to learn his true identity, however, it turned out to be a boy not
yet out of high school. I put him on probation by removing him off
the list for a month, I believe. He and I exchanged several e-mails
where I finally convinced him of the error of his ways and I think he
learned a valuable lesson from the experience.
> I am now starting to get the digests working properly, and I will be
> inviting digest members shortly. Is there anything else I should
> protect.
Your passwords. :-)
There was a time that I goofed an Approval process and my password
was distributed to the entire list. I discovered this immediately
but right at that time the Net decided to go dead on me. My order to
change the password was not getting to the server. Traceroute was
dying of old age getting to the Majordomo's server. And I had to get
back to work. I was panicking. Finally the order went through and I
got my passwords changed before any mischief could occur. Whew! I
never wanted to go through that again.
I later figured out a method to prevent this from happening ever
again.
> I would like to archive to the web or another medium but appreciate
> the need to hide Email addresses, so that will come later when I have
> had a chance to get my head round it and have some idea of what I
> should be doing.
I noted another subscriber recommended eScribe. They are a popular
service and I have other listowner friends that use that service, as
well.
I prefer The Mail Archive. My reasons are thus:
(1) They have no banner ads or other advertisements on the archived
pages. I have a basic distrust for the honesty of any site that uses
banner ads or has commercial sponsors. I personally would not be
comfortable at eScribe.
(2) The Mail Archive is protective of my subscribers' e-mail
addresses. The method they use to view an address would not be
conducive to robot gathering software. One only can view the
poster's address by clicking a submit button and that could only be
done one post at a time. Plus the site honors "No Archive" headers
for subscribers that do not wish public archiving.
(3) The guy that administer's to the site is a very nice and helpful
man that is unselfishly giving of his time to serve others. He is
not making money from this except in the good will that is gained for
his employers, who furnish the server space and allow him the time to
administer to the site. (The employer is VA LINUX SYSTEMS- makers of
computers, work stations, servers, software, etc...all flavored with
Linux. This company has a good, all around reputation.)
http://www.mail-archive.com/
Learn more by reading the FAQ:
http://www.mail-archive.com/faq.html
> Comments appreciated.
Understand this is pubic archiving. Any tom, dick and harry can read
your list posts. They don't have to be subscribers. I opted for
public archiving to support my limited host's archiving and for the
promotional aspects. The Mail Archive also gives me and my
subscribers an excellent search engine for past list posts.
Alan
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
