Re: [boost] Spamming through Boost mailing list

From: Jeff Garland (jeff_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-09-23 13:45:13

Rene Rivera wrote:
> Daniel James wrote:
>> Keith MacDonald wrote:
>>> It's not possible to harvest any email addresses from Boost mailing list 
>>> messages, unless you are silly enough to type them in a message, perhaps in 
>>> your signature.

Not true....it's in the header.

>> I think spammers are generally capable of getting email addresses from a 
>> header. But even if they were not, emails are often contained in message 
>> bodies, such as in your mail:

Exactly.

>>> "Rene Rivera" <grafikrobot_at_[hidden]> wrote in message 
>> I hope Rene will forgive you. ;*)
> 
> Now the question is can I forgive you, and myself for doing the same :-) 
> This is the reason why I use a Gmail account. Lots of spam filtering on it.
> 
> PS. To Keith; It would have been more effective to send email to the 
> list administrators directly instead of the whole list (see bottom of 
> <http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost>).

We can ask the admins at Indiana to look into if the list/machine has been 
compromised.  The machine this runs on hosts alot of lists and is very 
actively watched so I'd be surprised if it's could be compromised for long 
without someone noticing. That said, since you already received spam it's too 
late for your current address.  Of course, you're free to generate a new one.

BTW, I have text archives of the boost mailing list in which a simple grep can 
pull out email addresses from headers.  That turns out to be useful because 
sometimes I don't want to discuss every issue in public -- so I want to be 
able to get the email of the person.  So, as others have said, I'm afraid that 
in general it's impossible for us to prevent spammers from subscribing and 
harvesting...if I were a spammer that's how I'd do it...it's just not that 
difficult.

Jeff