At 04:58 even 11/1/02 +0530, Philip wrote:
I think he wanted to obfuscate addresses in the body of the message. That's a bad idea because it causes information loss.
People who are paranoid about spam (or just spam conscious) can obfuscate the addresses (if they want to put them in the body in the first place) themselves using simple techniques like quasar(at)vsnl(dot)com.
quasi
On Fri, 01 Nov 2002 17:13:23 +0530 q u a s i wrote:
People who are paranoid about spam (or just spam conscious) can obfuscate the addresses (if they want to put them in the body in the first place) themselves using simple techniques like quasar(at)vsnl(dot)com.
My post had Philip's email ID in clear. What was his fault? I don't know about much about spam-busting. How would I know how to protect *others'* email addresses? Would I even know that I'm supposed to protect them?
At 05:44 even 11/1/02 +0530, TM wrote:
My post had Philip's email ID in clear. What was his fault? I don't know about much about spam-busting. How would I know how to protect *others'* email addresses? Would I even know that I'm supposed to protect them?
I agree I overlooked it at the time of reply. But I think tampering the message is not a good idea (but that is MHO only). It would be better to live with the evil and try to lessen it with community education.
quasi
On Fri, 1 Nov 2002, q u a s i wrote:
People who are paranoid about spam (or just spam conscious) can obfuscate the addresses (if they want to put them in the body in the first place) themselves using simple techniques like quasar(at)vsnl(dot)com.
what happens if someone who is not so paranoid (about other people receiving spam anyway) puts your email address in the body, like _quasar@vsnl.com?
Philip
On Fri, Nov 01, 2002 at 05:13:23PM +0530, q u a s i wrote:
At 04:58 even 11/1/02 +0530, Philip wrote:
I think he wanted to obfuscate addresses in the body of the message. That's a bad idea because it causes information loss.
People who are paranoid about spam (or just spam conscious) can obfuscate the addresses (if they want to put them in the body in the first place) themselves using simple techniques like quasar(at)vsnl(dot)com.
That doesn't work when a person replying to your mail puts in your email address at the top of his email ... he is going to take it from your "From: " header.
Replying to Philip, I think obfuscating all the email addresses within an email isn't such a bad idea ... we are not touching the headers, are we?
Sameer.
On Fri, 1 Nov 2002, Sameer D. Sahasrabuddhe wrote:
Replying to Philip, I think obfuscating all the email addresses within an email isn't such a bad idea ... we are not touching the headers, are we?
Ok, let's look at some examples:
1.
How do I unsubscribe from this list?
Send mail to linuxers-request@mm.ilug-bom.org.in with unsubscribe....
mailman converts it to:
Send mail to linuxers-request@mm.il.....
(This is what yahoogroups does btw).
yes, converting the @ to [at] makes sense, but then the link is no longer clickable. In this particular example, munging the address gained nothing, but lossage was high.
2.
Wanted linux programmers, 2 years experience. Send resumes to jobs@mycompany.com
mailman converts it to:
Wanted linux programmers, 2 years experience. Send resumes to jobs@myc...
Not much use now. Ok, so this only happens on the archives, but it's still loss of information.
Some more examples:
3. I want to configure my sendmail so that all mail to user@domain1.com goes to user_domain1@domain2.com. What to do?
mailman converts it to:
I want to configure my sendmail so that all mail to user@dom... goes to user_domain1@dom.... What to do?
Huh???
4. SMTP tutorial:
MAIL FROM: user@host.domain
converts to:
SMTP tutorial:
MAIL FROM: <user@hos...>
Lossage!!
So, throw in your counter arguments, I'm prepared to defend ;)
On Fri, Nov 01, 2002 at 06:47:42PM +0530, Philip S Tellis wrote:
On Fri, 1 Nov 2002, Sameer D. Sahasrabuddhe wrote:
Replying to Philip, I think obfuscating all the email addresses within an email isn't such a bad idea ... we are not touching the headers, are we?
Ok, let's look at some examples:
Point taken Obfuscating is too strong, but [at] and [dot] do make sense. The unsubscribe addresses can be left untouched. Non-clickable contact addresses is a small price to pay.
Sameer.
On Fri, 1 Nov 2002 18:47:42 +0530 (IST) Philip S Tellis wrote:
So, throw in your counter arguments, I'm prepared to defend ;)
1) Disable hyperlinking. People are generally smart enough to copy and paste email addresses into their mail clients.
2) Optionally, replace @ with [at] when it appears between alphanumerics.
Obfuscation causes problems to humans too. I apologize for carelessly wording my first post about this. Something like Point 2 is what I actually meant to say. If you have problems with point 2, point 1 is acceptable to a large extent. Whatsay?
On Fri, 1 Nov 2002, Tahir Hashmi wrote:
- Disable hyperlinking. People are generally smart enough to copy and
paste email addresses into their mail clients.
no problem here.
- Optionally, replace @ with [at] when it appears between
alphanumerics.
yes problem here. see my examples 3 and 4. In both those examples, it becomes unclear if the list software automatically s/// addresses.
IMO, a mailing list software should *never* alter the content of a message. If someone wants an email address to show up, he should have the right to do that.
We can start off with this. Then we can start autowrapping long lines, and maybe fix microsoft smart quotes (I've already got perl one-liners that do both of these).
I don't believe changing the content of a message is The Right Thing to do.
Philip
On Fri, Nov 01, 2002 at 08:15:35PM +0530, Philip S Tellis wrote:
IMO, a mailing list software should *never* alter the content of a message. If someone wants an email address to show up, he should have the right to do that.
But when its somebody else's email address that you are showing? Like the first line of a quoted message ...
We can start off with this. Then we can start autowrapping long lines, and maybe fix microsoft smart quotes (I've already got perl one-liners that do both of these).
Let's focus on email harvesters for the time being ... we can introduce the other in a phased painless manner ;-)
I don't believe changing the content of a message is The Right Thing to do.
Agreed ... but if making a policy is going to benefit users on the list, then why not!
Sameer.
On Fri, 1 Nov 2002 20:15:35 +0530 (IST) Philip S Tellis wrote:
I don't believe changing the content of a message is The Right Thing to do.
The content of the message is also changed when you turn an email address into a hyperlink. Why do it when the original message didn't have a hyperlink? Someone who explicitly wants the email address to be clickable could send the mail in HTML (along with all the associated "evils" of HTML mails).
There sure will be problems like people will have to do a copy-paste where only a click could do and they'll have to replace all [at]s and [dot]s with @ and .. Also, in the archives some things might be confusing, like "... how changing foo[at]bar[dot]com to foo[at]bar[dot]com ..." (see above).
My point is that this issue be resolved considering practical issues rather than on the basis of "Right Thing" ideologies.
At 09:58 morn 11/2/02 +0530, TH wrote:
On Fri, 1 Nov 2002 20:15:35 +0530 (IST) Philip S Tellis wrote:
I don't believe changing the content of a message is The Right Thing to do.
The content of the message is also changed when you turn an email address into a hyperlink.
Strange. I cannot see any email address (which came to the lug server) which has been converted into an hyperlink. All the hyperlinked entities have been inserted into the headers of the message sent by the lug-list by the lug-list-mailer. This message contains the /same/ body part of the message received from the original sender plus some footers. IMHO the body of the original message is still included as it was - intact (as it should be).
My point is that this issue be resolved considering practical issues rather than on the basis of "Right Thing" ideologies.
"Right Thing" has to be kept in mind while considering practical issues. Right Things are "Right Things" for a good reason.
quasi
Ok, what we are going to do is this:
- No more hyperlinking of emails (yes, they were hyperlinked before, they haven't been for the last five days).
- No replacing @ with [at] and . with [dot] This replacement *will* cause more problems than it will solve.
Also, considering what Tahir has said, email harvesters look for mailto: links, and don't really do a pattern match on webpages.
Philip
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Philip S Tellis -
q u a s i -
Sameer D. Sahasrabuddhe -
Tahir Hashmi