[CH] Archive addresses - was SF Spam Factory
Michael Bowers (mkbowers@wiley.gsm.ucdavis.edu)
Tue, 30 Apr 2002 09:26:25 -0700
>Did anyone else receive spam from these guys? Am I correct in
>guessing that they trawled the C-H archives for email addresses?
This question has been put to me a few times in last few months, probably
because the amount of spam seems to have gone up exponentially. So, I took
some time to see if this was really a problem. I probably should have posted
this previously rather than sending out individual replies.
The chile-heads address list is not publicly available. The majordomo "who"
command is disabled, except for myself (I need to lookup variations of
addresses to help people having problems unsubscribing, etc). I have never
sold, given out or intend to give out the list addresses. In the early days of
the list (maybe the first year or so) the addresses were available, but it only
took one spam mail (and, it was chile related, and from a list member) for me
to stop doing this.
I have several 'chile-heads only' addresses imbedded in the list. These
addresses are only used for the list. This address is used for posting; I have
others for the digest and other functions. If I get any email to these
addresses other than list messages, then I know that the list addresses have
been compromised. I have not found a single piece of spam sent to any of these
addresses to date (which is more than I can say for my other addresses,
including owner-chile-heads). I have also seeded some addresses into the
archives (though, not lately); these, too, have not had _any_ email sent to
them.
I do realize the concern people have and am working on pulling all addresses
out of the archives as I'm sure it is only a matter of time before this
happens.
The San Francisco Sauce Factory spam was very widespread; I got multiple copies
to several addresses (though, again, not to any of the list addresses). I
think people can see from the messages posted on this topic that it wasn't
restricted to the list as not everyone got one.
As an aside, note that the list is refreshingly spam free :-)
I won't go into public details as to how that is done, but it works so far.
Please feel free to send me any suggestions or ideas; sending to
owner-chile-heads is the preferred address.
thanks
Mike