SPAM and archives (Was: Re: [plug] PHP question..)

[Craig Ringer]

> Both these messages suggest that the solution is for me to filter SPAM.
> While that requires even more of my resources apart from the stolen
> bandwidth, I must very strongly disagree with these sentiments.
> 
> The solution is to stop SPAM in the first place.

True, but we can't do that right now. Filtering is a band-aid until a 
real solution is found, but it can be a good band-aid indeed.

I, for one, find it bloody offensive that I should have to worry about 
who I tell my email addr to and where for fear of the damnn spammers - 
may they go and die in a gutter. Why should I have to remove my address 
from list archives? It's no better than the other "solutions" including 
filtering and using a dummy From: address - it works, but doesn't really 
address the core problem.

> While you may well argue that your email address is already "out there",
> this is not a constructive means of resolving the problem. I agree that
> you can not currently do much about existing lists, but you can try real
> hard to not be added to any more lists. New SPAMmers are born each day.
> Making their job harder is one way of making it less effective.
> 
> The problem is currently caused by email harvesters, which we can very
> simply provide less addresses to by removing addresses from a
> web-archive.

Unfortunately, your address will be on lists of addresses available for 
sale now. Removing it from the list archives may not be overly helpful.

> To top things off, a business that sells computers or burns CDs or sells
> anything of interest to a huge group of dedicated Linux heads is well
> advised to use the PLUG archive to do their harvesting. (Apart from the
> escort services that are looking for a high percentage of male users.)
> 
> One solution for me may be that until this is resolved I break with
> proper list protocol and only respond directly to individuals who ask a
> question - this is bad in sooo many ways for our community.

Or you could just break your From: address for posts to the list. This 
is not hard to do from many mail clients that support multiple accounts 
and/or profiles (a dummy local account in mozilla is a good way to do 
this). Sure, direct replies would bounce, but that shouldn't be too much 
of an issue if you consider the spam that bad.

That said, in the spirit of multiple layers of protection I'm inclined 
to think that anti-spamming headers in the archives would be a good 
thing to do.

Craig Ringer