At 09:33 -0500 2001/12/17, Etienne Marcotte wrote: >This is a very very good search engine for the mailing list!!! Great >work
Thank you! >Two things: >2- Put the "Any Date" checked by default so we don'T have to always >click it:-) (I'm lazzzzy) You could add some javascript so that the >range is celected when something is entered in the from or to fields Second one first: "Any Date" is already checked by default. What browser/OS are you using? >1- Is it possible to remove our full email adresses? > To put like emarcott@... or emarcott at itl dot ca (like the >mysqldeveloper archive. > > >my 2 cents > >#2 is not a big thing, but #1 is pretty important against spam and spam >bots. > >Etienne A valid concern, Etienne, and one that's very important to me, too. Word's fail me in describing how much I detest spam -- well, at least polite ones do. :-/ I believe our information is safe in this case, though. Let me explain why: To the best of my knowledge, Email harvesting 'bots (spambots) use technology similar to that used by the big web search engines. Those companies, like Google, Yahoo, etc., run two main pieces of software; one (a 'spider') that continually accesses all the sites on the web -- well, they hope it's all of them -- and stores information about, or a complete copy of, each page they find. These pages are stored in their database on their big, fire-breathing computers (it's a staggering amount of data) and that's what the _other_ piece of software, the search engine, looks through when you do a search. The spambots do basically the same thing -- they gather up web pages. They, however, simply extract anything that looks like an email address. These lower-than-pond-scum then add that to their database (350 MILLION TARGETTED EMAIL ADDRSSES FOR ONLY $399.00!) and lie that you 'opted-in' or 'expressed an interest.' Fortunately, search engine page gatherers and spambots can access only 'static' html pages that exist on a server and can be searched. The pages you see when you search the email archive are safe from 'bots because they don't even _exist_ until you ask for them -- they're generated on-the-fly, on demand, and they're sent directly to your computer. The content of the archive is visible only to the person doing the search. So, it's a 99% solution. There's still the chance that an unscrupulous person could go to the effort of doing an archive search in the hopes of getting some email addresses to spam, but that's simply not their style; that's too much like legitimate work. Pirating email addresses is 'profitable' (I guess) if they let a computer do all the work; it's not if a person has to write them down or type them in. There are places that DO put the contents of mailing lists up on the web on static, searchable pages. You should be aware of them so you can make better-informed decisions, and thereby have more control over where your address appears. One site with the MySQL list is http://dbforums.com/f114/. Or try, for example, http://www.mail-archive.com/dbi-users@perl.org/msg06361.html For an interesting exercise, you should try going to www.google.com, or your favourite search engine, and doing a web search on your email address and/or your phone number. The hits you get on that search are the prime places where spambots are getting your email address from. I truly believe we're safe, though I'd love to hear more comments. All the best, /Rob -- Robert Alexander ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) 416-823-6599 http://www.workmate.ca WWW Database Applications and Web Hosting Searchable MySQL List Archive: http://archive.workmate.ca/myarchive --------------------------------------------------------------------- Before posting, please check: http://www.mysql.com/manual.php (the manual) http://lists.mysql.com/ (the list archive) To request this thread, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Trouble unsubscribing? Try: http://lists.mysql.com/php/unsubscribe.php
