From: Ben Giddings <bg-rubytalk@...>
Date: 2003-09-23T00:09:09+09:00
Subject: Re: Real emails on newsgroup version (was Re: POP3Filter)

Dave Thomas wrote:
> It wasn't a conscious decision: I just reflected the e-mail out to 
> usenet as it stood. It struck me that as this was a public mailing list, 
> with no subscription qualifications, then any e-mail address used was 
> effectively public too.
> 
> I'm open to discussion on this

In theory, I like the idea of sending out the email as is, unfortunately, 
in the modern world, having your email be easy to get is simply a recipe 
for getting spammed, or "wormed".

Even though I don't run Windows at all, this newest worm has wasted hours 
of my precious time.  Half was spent tweaking SpamAssassin filters, the 
other half was spend dealing with the mail that snuck through.

Having said that, I'm in a much better position than some, because I run my 
own server, have a mailing-list-specific email address, and know enough to 
tweak my filters.

Even though the mailing list is public, it's a lot less visible than a 
newsgroup, and so it doesn't end up on a spam list as easily.  I think it 
would make sense to obfuscate the email address on messages copied from the 
mailing list to the newsgroup, and then "deobfuscate" it on the way back. 
It could be as simple as transforming this: user@domain.com to 
user@domain.example.com.

Even if most people on the list run good spam filtering software, there's 
still the bandwidth and CPU cost of having that spam get through the whole 
filtering process.

That's my feeling anyhow.

Ben