Re: Degausser/Nature of Listserv

[David Escalante <david.escalante () BC EDU>]

On Oct 21, 2010, at 5:05 PM, Greg Schaffer wrote:

> On a side note, what wasn’t appreciated was that a vendor apparently monitoring this list cold called me about their 
> degausser product, noticing that I had mentioned a need “on line” (note this is the only place I have inquired).  I 
> thought there were list rules about such; I guess next time I will need to clarify that I am looking for 
> suggestions/recommendations from higher ed peers, not vendors or resellers (sigh). 


Folks, everyone needs to be aware that anything sent to this list is publicly archived on the Educause site.  That's 
right, all messages are archived there by month with no credentials or list membership required to access them.  Any 
vendor, hacker, etc. can scrape all our communications with a little scripting work, or read them interactively online.

So regarding this list, anytime you write, "We are using vendor X," you are providing the vendor with a searchable 
reference (or diss ;-) ).  Anytime you post a job, outside recruiting companies can troll it.  Anytime you ask for help 
on something like a product selection for a degausser, it is free game for anyone on the Internet to read without 
breaking any rules that I'm aware of.

If you don't like this, we need to let Educause know.  It's not clear to me what role REN-ISAC might play as an 
alternative...I believe there was some desire on that entity's part to push more general questions and material off the 
non-public REN-ISAC lists and onto this open to the universe list.   I understand that the Educause CIO list is 
similarly public, and the CIOs just live with it.

My personal opinion is that a non-public list would be beneficial to the higher ed security community.  But I am not 
the moderator, nor am I involved in the maintenance of the list or the web site it's archived on in any way.  Just 
trying to get the facts out, since a number of subscribers don't seem to be aware of the list's public archives.
--
David Escalante

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