Re: Address harvesting of EDUCAUSE?

[Scott Fendley <scottf () UARK EDU>]

Yes that would be a good idea.  But not hugely necessary.  There is a new
version of listserv that came out last year that will mask the addresses
for non-subscribed/non-logged in users.  If you are a subscriber, and you
log into the interface then you can see all the addresses (from or in the
body of the emails).  If you don't log into the list server, then you get
a masked email address that is not useful to anyone to try to harvest.

So personally, I think the best course of action is to upgrade to the new
version of listserv and it will correct the harvesting problem with this
listserv mailing list server.  For those that subscribe to the list and
then harvest, there is not a lot to stop them from doing it through the
list archives, or creating a list from emails like this one sent to the
entire list.

Scott Fendley


On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, Kevin Shalla wrote:

> Would it be a good idea to require a login (and you're required to
> subscribe to get a login) to search the archives?
>
> At 01:28 PM 2/26/2005, Steve Bernard wrote:
> > Matthew Dalton wrote:
> > > I would be curious to know if anyone that has not posted to the list
> > > before has received spam.  Through a very simple script in UNIX, I was
> > > able to get 84 addresses from the mailing list archive.  It seems that
> > > the spammer wouldn't necessarily need to be a member of the list.  They
> > > only need a web browser.  By the way, I ran the script from my home
> > > machine, just to be sure that it was accessible from outside of .edu
> > > sites.  Perhaps at the least these archives should be restricted to only
> > > members.
> > >
> > > lynx -dump
> > > 'http://listserv.educause.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A1=ind0502&L=security' |
> > > grep 'From:' | awk '{print $NF}' | sort -u
> >
> > Good example. Email address harvesting from public listservs, forums,
> > and websites has been going on for a long time. It seems that this list
> > hasn't been targeted before. At least not noticeably. It's a good way to
> > find live email addresses for directed marketing and other less
> > honorable purposes. Given the audience I'm a bit surprised that so many
> > seem to be experiencing this phenomena for the first time.
>
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