At 12:47 PM -0800 1/30/98, Richard Masoner wrote:
> Have any other owners of archived lists had similar requests to remove
> archived email?
Yes. Because once places like Altavista started snooping through
mailing list archives, spammers started sniffing through places like
Alta vista. I had someone get spammed based on an address he used to
post to a mailing list he hadn't been a member of for three years.
I now deny all my archives via robots.txt, which stops the legitimate
mega-crawlers. It won't stop someone who specifically targets my lists,
but then, someone who specifically targets my lists I'll have trouble
stopping, anyway (instead of snarfing the archives, just subscribe and
quietly grab addresses until you feel you have enough and don't care
what happens when I find out...)
I occasionally get idiots who do this subscribe/snarf on a individual
basis, and I practice quite hard-core scorched earth on them. But most
of the folks who pull these stunts are lazy. They go for the global
systems and fish there. By keeping my stuff out of them, I can protect
my users about as reasonably as possible.
I have also had, on two occasions, requests by users to expunge their
accounts or complete postings. With the limited restriction of removing
actively damaging or incorrect postings (i.e., things that are just
plain old actionable wrong), I refuse -- one can't go and remove your
name from the newspaper morgues just because you no longer want it
known you said or did somethign, and I view archives the same way. So I
decline those. People may regret they said something, but I don't
believe they can pretend they didn't say it (but they shouldn't be
spammed for saying it...)
chuq
--
Chuq Von Rospach (chuq@apple.com) Apple IS&T Mail List Gnome
<http://www.solutions.apple.com/ListAdmin/>
Plaidworks Consulting (chuqui@plaidworks.com) <http://www.plaidworks.com/>
(<http://www.plaidworks.com/hockey/> +-+ The home for Hockey on the net)
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