Herb Peyerl wrote:
> "Wolfgang S. Rupprecht" <wolfgang+gnus20040205T102017@dailyplanet.dontspam.wsrcc.com>  wrote:
>  > 
>  > from spammers sending directly to the aliases.  I assume that there is
>  > (or was) some way for spammers to generate a list of the mailinglist
>  > subscribers.
> 
> Much simpler. They just harvest the mailing list archives since
> we also don't obfuscate messages on their way to the archive.

   Yes.  I maintain a news site with opinion columns and e-mail
addresses for contacting writers. I often update the robots.txt
list to reject spambots.  ...will be adding scripts to get rid
of those that ignore robots.txt, but it still won't stop all of
the spambots.

   The best way to stop Web spambots from harvesting a mailing list
archive, IMO, is the way some Yahoo lists owners do it with a
Yahoo list config--to *simply cut off part of each and every
e-mail address in every post before they are posted to the Web.*
Surely a script (even an existing, free script) exists for this,
and it's better than simply obfuscating.  If the spambots can't
get whole mail addresses at all, they can't gather usable
addresses.  And there's no reason, IMO, that our e-mail addresses
should be visible at all in the Web archive.  Existing archives
could be parsed to remove parts of all e-mail addresses, too, no?


Art