My $.02 = Attempting to hide all the emails does more harm than good…
it really only makes it harder for people to contact you who have a
genuine reason to do so (i.e. - with a Ruby question).
I agree that email mangling causes as many problems as it solves,
however there’s another possibility. I don’t recall the name of the
approach, but I’ve seen systems where you’re presented with a graphic
containing a word (and a mangled background to foil OCR) and you must
type it into a form in order to get access to a web system. The idea is
to ensure that it is a real person viewing the web archive rather than a
spammer’s harvesting bot.
Would something like that be an acceptable compromise? Who’s in charge
of the web archive?
Problem is that it makes Google useless for searching the archives.
Apple’s mailing lists do something similar but less secure, and it
neatly eliminates them as a useful repository of knowledge (Apple’s own
list archive and search UI being almost completely useless).
Chris
···
On Oct 21, 2003, at 2:43 PM, Greg Vaughn wrote:
Ryan Dlugosz said:
My $.02 = Attempting to hide all the emails does more harm than
good…
it really only makes it harder for people to contact you who have a
genuine reason to do so (i.e. - with a Ruby question).
I agree that email mangling causes as many problems as it solves,
however there’s another possibility. I don’t recall the name of the
approach, but I’ve seen systems where you’re presented with a graphic
containing a word (and a mangled background to foil OCR) and you must
type it into a form in order to get access to a web system. The idea
is to ensure that it is a real person viewing the web archive rather
than a spammer’s harvesting bot.
Would something like that be an acceptable compromise? Who’s in charge
of the web archive?
approach, but I’ve seen systems where you’re presented with a graphic
containing a word (and a mangled background to foil OCR) and you must
type it into a form in order to get access to a web system. The idea is
to ensure that it is a real person viewing the web archive rather than a
spammer’s harvesting bot.
Yes, see October DDJ for one, but do we really want to exclude blind
people ? And possibly dyslexic people as well…
Another disadvantage of such a system is that it will prevent people
from searching the archives with google. (most of the times when i
searched something about ruby, google would give me a relevant post in
the web archives) Then wouldn’t it be better render the email-address
of the poster as a graphic ?
Ruben
···
On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 08:35:32 +0900, Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng hgs@dmu.ac.uk wrote:
On Wed, 22 Oct 2003, Greg Vaughn wrote:
approach, but I’ve seen systems where you’re presented with a graphic
containing a word (and a mangled background to foil OCR) and you must
type it into a form in order to get access to a web system. The idea is
to ensure that it is a real person viewing the web archive rather than a
spammer’s harvesting bot.
Yes, see October DDJ for one, but do we really want to exclude blind
people ? And possibly dyslexic people as well…
Another disadvantage of such a system is that it will prevent people
from searching the archives with google. (most of the times when i
searched something about ruby, google would give me a relevant post in
the web archives) Then wouldn’t it be better render the email-address
of the poster as a graphic ?
can someone please, please describe the issues associated with mangling
the email address? is this too hard for people reading this list to
understand?
ruby-talk at pcppopper dot org
or ruby-talk@nospam.pcppopper.org
and then having a note on the front page saying that you must remove the
nospam. part from email addresses?
or some similar scheme?
nikolai
···
–
::: name: Nikolai Weibull :: aliases: pcp / lone-star / aka :::
::: born: Chicago, IL USA :: loc atm: Gothenburg, Sweden :::
::: page: www.pcppopper.org :: fun atm: gf,lps,ruby,lisp,war3 :::
main(){printf(&linux[“\021%six\012\0”],(linux)[“have”]+“fun”-97);}
approach, but I’ve seen systems where you’re presented with a graphic
containing a word (and a mangled background to foil OCR) and you must
[…]
Yes, see October DDJ for one, but do we really want to exclude blind
people ? And possibly dyslexic people as well…
Another disadvantage of such a system is that it will prevent people
from searching the archives with google. (most of the times when i
searched something about ruby, google would give me a relevant post in
Yes, agreed.
the web archives) Then wouldn’t it be better render the email-address
of the poster as a graphic ?
. People went to a lot of trouble to make SVG accessible to
screen readers, braille displays and the like. You are proposing the
opposite.
Is there really some reason why a password cannot be used to gain
access to the addresses in a message, with a lowish limit of 10 per
day or something? Abuse would be easy to detect.
Ruben
Hugh
···
On Wed, 22 Oct 2003, Ruben Vandeginste wrote:
On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 08:35:32 +0900, Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng > hgs@dmu.ac.uk wrote:
the web archives) Then wouldn’t it be better render the email-address
of the poster as a graphic ?
. People went to a lot of trouble to make SVG accessible to
screen readers, braille displays and the like. You are proposing the
opposite.
agreed. but i thought that it wouldn’t be that much of a problem if
the screen readers can’t access the poster’s email address. i also
think that it’s not possible to make the email address accessible to
screen readers, but not to email harvesters through obfuscation.
Obfuscation by using things like ‘ruby-talk at pcppopper dot org’ or
‘ruby-talk@nospam.pcppopper.org’ is probably not that effective in
hiding addresses from mail harvesters. This kind of things has already
been in use for such a long time, you’d expect mail harvesters to take
into account these things…
Is there really some reason why a password cannot be used to gain
access to the addresses in a message, with a lowish limit of 10 per
day or something? Abuse would be easy to detect.
Your idea sounds good, but probably involves a lot of work for the
person who has to implement it (just as the other ideas mentioned i
guess).
Ruben
PS. i’ve been completely ‘Swen’-free for over a week now, but guess
what, right after my post on the mailing list i recieved 4
'Swen’s… coincidence ? don’t think so…
···
On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 18:34:32 +0900, Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng hgs@dmu.ac.uk wrote:
PS. i’ve been completely ‘Swen’-free for over a week now, but guess
what, right after my post on the mailing list i recieved 4
'Swen’s… coincidence ? don’t think so…
heh, ok, so either we have a harvester, or some #!@#!$^@ on the list is
distributing Swen to us? I recently had to change my email provider and
address, since my old account got totally destroyed by Swen when it was
launched. Now, the only address i get Swen to still is the address I’m
using now. It’s sad that it has to be this way, I don’t want to leave
this mailing list, especially not by outside force,
nikolai
···
–
::: name: Nikolai Weibull :: aliases: pcp / lone-star / aka :::
::: born: Chicago, IL USA :: loc atm: Gothenburg, Sweden :::
::: page: www.pcppopper.org :: fun atm: gf,lps,ruby,lisp,war3 :::
main(){printf(&linux[“\021%six\012\0”],(linux)[“have”]+“fun”-97);}
On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 18:34:32 +0900, Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng
. People went to a lot of trouble to make SVG accessible to
screen readers, braille displays and the like. You are proposing the
opposite.
agreed. but i thought that it wouldn’t be that much of a problem if
the screen readers can’t access the poster’s email address. i also
Not much of a problem for whom?
think that it’s not possible to make the email address accessible to
screen readers, but not to email harvesters through obfuscation.
“aGdzQGRtdS5hYy51aw==”.unpack(“m*”)
Then theres .reverse, .tr, .swapcase,…
A screen reader can tell you there is ruby code there, even if you
have to push it into irb yourself to get the answer. This leaves the
user in the same position as sighted people. That seems fair to my
way of thinking.
PS. i’ve been completely ‘Swen’-free for over a week now, but guess
what, right after my post on the mailing list i recieved 4
'Swen’s… coincidence ? don’t think so…
Thanks, but i personally don’t experience much trouble from these
spam/virus mails. Actually all mail that arrives in my mailbox
survived a virusscanner, spamassassin and bsproc. The virusscanner and
spamassassin are on the mailserver. The filtering by bsproc is done on
my side, and i want to mention that i am really happy with bsproc,
it’s really good in discovering junk.
Ruben
···
On Thu, 23 Oct 2003 01:13:58 +0900,Wed, 22 Oct 2003 09:13:56 -0700, Eric Hodel drbrain@segment7.net wrote:
I’ve added the following procmail rule, and am 100% PE/COFF virus free
(all modern win32 executables start with this string):
agreed. but i thought that it wouldn’t be that much of a problem if
the screen readers can’t access the poster’s email address. i also
Not much of a problem for whom?
If you would really really want the original poster’s address, you
could still subscribe to the mailinglist, retrieve that message (with
the original poster’s address) and unsubscribe from the mailinglist.
think that it’s not possible to make the email address accessible to
screen readers, but not to email harvesters through obfuscation.
“aGdzQGRtdS5hYy51aw==”.unpack(“m*”)
Then theres .reverse, .tr, .swapcase,…
right… i didn’t think about that.
A screen reader can tell you there is ruby code there, even if you
have to push it into irb yourself to get the answer. This leaves the
user in the same position as sighted people. That seems fair to my
way of thinking.
From: Nikolai Weibull
…
heh, ok, so either we have a harvester, or some #!@#!$^@ on
the list is distributing Swen to us? I recently had to
change my email provider and address, since my old account
got totally destroyed by Swen when it was launched. Now, the
only address i get Swen to still is the address I’m using
now. It’s sad that it has to be this way, I don’t want to
leave this mailing list, especially not by outside force,
nikolai
Hi,
Since the gateway news => mail is broken I have an incentive
to resubscribe to the mailing list. As a fringe benefit I got
to test the following setup (which was only send to the news
server)
How about this solution: Create a dedicated (non-brain dead) free email
account: In the anti-spam option section mark appropriate setting to
refuse accepting emails flagged as spam. Put ruby-talk (and possible
other)
email address(es) in the white-list and everything else (meaning
everything) in the blacklist. For accepting off list mail adjust the
return
'tis strange, but I’m looking at the log files, and I can see the the
news-mail gateway picking up news messages and sending them on to the
mailing list, but I don’t see them appearing on the list.
The last two that came through were from Greg Bondo, talking about
mysql. They passed through my box here about 5 and 3 hours ago.
···
On Thursday, Oct 23, 2003, at 07:06 US/Central, Christoph wrote:
Since the gateway news => mail is broken I have an incentive
to resubscribe to the mailing list.
Since the gateway news => mail is broken I have an incentive
to resubscribe to the mailing list.
'tis strange, but I’m looking at the log files, and I can see the the
news-mail gateway picking up news messages and sending them on to the
mailing list, but I don’t see them appearing on the list.
The last two that came through were from Greg Bondo, talking about
mysql. They passed through my box here about 5 and 3 hours ago.
ruby-talk now rejects mails older than 7 days to prevent recent
“re-post” accident. These mails from Greg were dated
03/10/23 16:47:49 Past 7 days: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 05:26:57 GMT
03/10/23 17:07:53 Past 7 days: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 05:26:57 GMT
03/10/23 17:08:02 Past 7 days: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 05:26:57 GMT
03/10/23 18:08:08 Past 7 days: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 05:26:57 GMT
03/10/23 18:48:01 Past 7 days: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 05:26:57 GMT
This is the reason we didn’t deliver.
matz.
···
In message “Mail-News gateway” on 03/10/23, Dave Thomas dave@pragprog.com writes:
On Thursday, Oct 23, 2003, at 07:06 US/Central, Christoph wrote:
? And possibly dyslexic people as well…