From: Ben Giddings <bg-rubytalk@...>
Date: 2003-09-23T04:02:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Real emails on newsgroup version (was Re: POP3Filter)

On Monday, September 22, 2003, at 12:35  PM, Dave Thomas wrote:
>> It wouldn't take much effort to change the email address, would it?
>>
>>   email.sub(/@/, " (at) ")
>>
>> And nobody would *complain* that their address was being modified.
>>
>
> Well, I wasn't sure - it's sometimes inconvenient dealing with hacked 
> e-mail addresses - it means that anyone wanting to send e-mail to a 
> poster has to retype.
>
> Might it not be easier to set up a filter so that you only accept mail 
> to a particular alias if it comes from ruby-talk?

Then wouldn't that defeat the purpose of being able to reply to 
someone?  In one case you have to retype the address, in the other 
case, you simply can't reach them because of the filter.

Let me explain why I think having obfuscated email address is 
essential.  When I joined the Ruby mailing list I did it from a work 
account, but I didn't know that the address would be mirrored exactly 
as-is to newsgroups.  When I found out it was too late, I was already 
getting tons of spam.  Unfortunately, the email server at work is a MS 
exchange server and so there's no way I can get it to be more spamproof.

Once I realized that my email was being sent out as-is, I switched to 
my home account on a custom address.  Then, last Thursday, both that 
account and my work account started getting flooded with spam.  After a 
little work I was able to tweak the filters on my home account to avoid 
it all, but my work account is still being flooded and there's nothing 
I can do about it, aside from exercise my delete key.

My personal opinion is that any time an email address is shown in an 
easy to harvest way (either via newsgroups or via a web page) it should 
automatically be obfuscated.  It doesn't have to be anything fancy, 
just enough that not every single spambot will spot it.

Ben