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Newsgroup and spammers

1 message · Patrick Connolly

#
According to Duncan Murdoch:
|> 
|> I agree that a newsgroup gateway would be a good idea.  I volunteer to
|> help whoever wants to set one up.  If nobody volunteers to head the
|> project, then I'll put it on my list of things to do myself, but it's
|> unlikely to happen before my sabbatical in 2004 if it's on that list.

If mail to R-help ends up on a newsgroup, I would want my email
address removed from such postings.  I'd be surprised if I am the only
one who doesn't want my email address put in the firing line of
address harvesters for onselling to spammers.  The idea commonly used
with newsgroups of adding spurious characters into the address won't
work because I then won't get mail from r-help.

I have a suggestion and request for whomsoever sets up a gateway:

A list of addresses of people who don't want real email addresses in
the firing line could be stored in a safe place.  Any text that is to
be sent through the gateway could pass through a filter that would
remove those text strings before it went out to pasture (so to speak).
A simple perl script would probably be sufficient.

The logistics of just how subscribers to r-help get their names onto
that list I'm not clear on, but I'm sure someone would have a good idea.

best