[Fwd: Archive Removal (VTR/Stag Digest/Triumphs)]

[Glenn Merrell <gmerrel@domain.elided>]

"Jeffrey A. Campbell" wrote:
> 
> (Glenn, I am not on the Stag Digest, please forward this to the members
> so they know that the archive has been removed.  Tks.)
> 
> On Sun, 27 Dec 1998, Glenn Merrell wrote:
> 
> > Triumph Digests, and the Stag Digests.  All search engines and archives will be
> > purged December 28, 1998, gone forever
> 
>         These two archives have been removed.  Unfortunately, a number of
> people were using them at the time, but as you wish.  It may be worthwhile
> to seek the input of the list(s) as a whole, to see what their position is
> given the spam counter-measures that are in place.  I also wanted to make it
> clear that the Triumphs list was not being archived, only the text files from
> the VTR site that Glenn has asked us to index.  We do not archive lists
> without the owner/admins permission and without the list being aware of the
> archive and how to exlcude messages.
> 
> >       One dissatisfied person nets the search engines history, and you will need to
> > search them the old way ... not at all, or write your own search utility.  Seems
> > like this turned out to be a Mr. Bean fiasco, instead of a Grand Day Out.
> 
>         To be fair to Mark, at no point did he say "No" to the archive,
> or demand that they be removed.  He expressed his strong concern that it
> may result in increased spam for members, and that he wanted to make it
> clear that he did not want to cause that.  I would encourage everyone to
> visit the site at http://www.listquest.com/ and see how it works so you
> can weigh the pros and cons before dismissing the service.
> 
> The Mini list has been enthusiastically using the service for a few months,
> Marcel, the Mini owner who (and I'm trying to seek the write word here Mark,
> knowing that you Admin the technical side of the list) 'manages' the list
> provided us with old digests going back 3-4 years.  There are over 46,000
> messages available answering virtually any question about Minis and no
> reports of spam problems.
> 
>         In that vein, as a Triumph owner and member of a number of mailing
> lists, I wanted to take a second to address some of the spam concerns.
> 
>         First off, I wanted to make it clear that ListQuest/Core Networks
> is ardently against spam, on all fronts.  First and foremost, we do not
> mine, sell or otherwise extract any e-mail addresses from the archives for
> any use inside our outside the company, for any purpose.  We have a
> published privacy statement http://lq.corenetworks.com/common/privacy.html
> and we are in the process of becoming members of Trust-E (www.etrust.org)
> to further cement our position and back it up with membership of a third
> party privacy organization (Excite, Lycos, Yahoo and many others are
> also memebers).
> 
>         Secondly, we go to great lengths to protect the archives from
> roving spammers.  The first step in this process is converting all e-mail
> addresses (whether in the header or body of messages) to GIFs.  This
> makes it easy for readers to see what the address is, but difficult for
> roving "spam bots" to nab addresses automatically.  In fact we take it a
> step further.  The CGI that creates the GIFs encrypts the source so that
> you can't use the source to get the address.  IE the source for a typical
> address would appear lke this:
> 
> /cgi-bin/text2gif?%3bOu%29yD2%2c%5dq%3d08II%5d%2fJw%29y%22%22hytXz%3b4%3cSA
> 
>         We are also in the process of cycling through a number of different
> encryption methods so that if someone goes to the trouble of reverse
> engineering the code, by the time they write a decoder, we will be using
> a new method (our plan is to change methods every 24 hours, if not sooner).
> There is also no way to view all messages/addresses at once.  A spammer would
> have to go to each message individually to get the addresses.
> 
>         Spammers, by definition, are lazy.  It would be much easier to
> simply subscribe to a list and keep all the e-mail addresses of members, or
> grab past digests from FTP or Majordomo servers, than to go to the trouble
> of trying to extract them from ListQuest.  You would have to write quite a
> bit of code to steal them from the ListQuest archives and also do quite
> a bit of thinking.  Again, spammers are not known to be big thinkers. :)
> 
>         For those members who want to explicity exclude specific posts,
> or all of their posts, they can simply insert the phrase NO ARCHIVE
> anywhere in their message and it will not be included in the archive.
> We have over 50 lists archived, free,  at Listquest.com and we have had
> virtually no complaints from the ~15,000 people those lists represent.  We
> have also had no reports of increases in spam other junk mail.  That isn't
> to say that it can't/won't happen, but to date there has not been an issue.
> 
>         As well, the archives themselves are not indexed by search
> engines, only the navigational pages.  So, with the exception of someone
> explicity linking to a message then having their page indexed, messages
> will not appear in AltaVista or other engines.
> 
>         Again, it is much easier for a lazy spammer to join a busy
> list, save the mail for a few weeks, and mine addresses from there.  Or,
> join a list, download past digests in text format, and extract addresses
> from them, than it is to try and steal addresses that are encrypted on
> the web page.  You don't need to write any code to steal them the "easy"
> way.
> 
>         As a final counter-measure, we can provide password-protected archives.
> This is not particularly desireable as it means that those Triumph owners
> who are looking for answers, who aren't on the list and privy to the
> password, can't search the archive.  However, given the other spam
> countermeasures that are in place this is fairly unattractive and likely
> not necessary.
> 
>         I would be curious to hear from other list members about their
> thoughts on archives and how we might be able to approach this issue to
> provide a service to the list members without causing serious problems
> in relation to spam.
> 
>         I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and that Santa delivered
> the goods when it comes to shop tools and car parts. :)
> 
> --
> Jeffrey A. Campbell
> Chief Technology Officer
> Triumph TR7 Owner
> Core Networks Inc.
> http://www.listquest.com
> http://www.corenetworks.com