[ack94598@yahoo.com: [postmaster@sources.redhat.com] please get rid of my email addreess from your publicly readable archive]

[ack94598@yahoo.com: [postmaster@sources.redhat.com] please get rid of my email addreess from your publicly readable archive]

[Christopher Faylor]

Duly forwarded.

Should we change the site policy?  I really have little sympathy for
people who can't at the very least provide an example URL and, even more
amusingly, doesn't provide the email address that they want munged (as
was the case here).  I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who don't
realize that their email address could be harvested if they include it
in clear text in their email, either.

However, my lack of sympathy aside, should we work on instituting some
kind of "munge my email address" request?

I know I keep asking this question, and I really don't want to take any
of my personal time to do something like this but the requests are on
the rise.  Some people are even making legal threats to Red Hat over
this issue.

I'm still perfectly willing to think of this as a "letter to the editor"
type thing but I was wondering if anyone had changed their minds on this
issue.

cgf

----- Forwarded message from Adam <ack94598@yahoo.com> -----

From: Adam <actual email address omitted>
To: postmaster at cygwin dot com
CC: actual email address omitted
Subject: [postmaster@sources.redhat.com] please get rid of my email addreess from your publicly readable archive
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 19:38:13 -0800


I have an email address that I would really, really like to keep spam 
free.  I posted a message to the cygwin@sourceware.cygnus.com mailing 
list in 1999 and it appears unmunged and available for auto-harvesting 
by itself and in several replies.  I have started receiving spam to this 
address as a result (it appears nowhere else on the web).

Please, please, please auto-munge these old emails as you do for the new 
emails to your mailing lists.  I am very serious about this.

Adam

----- End forwarded message -----

Re: [ack94598@yahoo.com: [postmaster@sources.redhat.com] please get rid of my email addreess from your publicly readable archive]

[Angela Marie Thomas]

> I know I keep asking this question, and I really don't want to take any
> of my personal time to do something like this but the requests are on
> the rise.  Some people are even making legal threats to Red Hat over
> this issue.

You can reduce Red Hat liability by ensuring the initial "welcome
to this list mail" let's them know the risks.  At some point, the
auto-munging will no longer work so warning folks ahead of time
may save some aggravation later.

WRT the actual request, if there's no easy way to post-munge
old archives, you could make the archives unavailable without a
username/password (often just simple .htaccess passwd auth with
the username/passwd in the login prompt).  Downside is this kills
having the archives in search engines.  Upside is you shouldn't
have to deal with these requests.

--Angela

Re: [ack94598@yahoo.com: [postmaster@sources.redhat.com] please get rid of my email addreess from your publicly readable archive]

[Gerald Pfeifer]

On Sun, 26 Jan 2003, Christopher Faylor wrote:
> However, my lack of sympathy aside, should we work on instituting some
> kind of "munge my email address" request?

I don't see why we should.  Now, if somebody wants to invest his/her time
and effort, that's certainly fine, but...

> I know I keep asking this question, and I really don't want to take any
> of my personal time to do something like this but the requests are on
> the rise.  Some people are even making legal threats to Red Hat over
> this issue.

...these legal threats are ridiculous (at least under those legal systems
I know).

Angela Marie Thomas wrote:
> You can reduce Red Hat liability by ensuring the initial "welcome
> to this list mail" let's them know the risks.

This won't suffice, as most of our lists are open (that is, not
subscriber-only).  What we for GCC is having

  Please send comments on these web pages and GCC to our public mailing
  list at gcc@gnu.org or gcc@gcc.gnu.org, [...]

in the footer of all web pages -- note "our public mailing lists".

Gerald
-- 
Gerald Pfeifer (Jerry)   gerald@pfeifer.com   http://www.pfeifer.com/gerald/