On Wed, Sep 29, 2004 at 06:05:23PM +1200, Russell Fulton wrote:
There is currently a very similar debate going on on the NZ ADSL list over the presence of email addresses in the archive and the fact that this is easy spam bait. My response to that argument is the same, taking the email addresses out of archives will not slow spammers down much but it will make the archives significantly less useful and lead to more traffic on the lists.
Actually I thought about this a little. I think it does have some differences. Particular being able to cross-ref the zone file against the whois data allows a more physical and structured attack. Like setting up a seal team. Where as spam harvesting of email is more like a blind folded shotgun team. Of course if the spammers are collection profile information by tracking you with cookies then all bets are off. Finally with email spam its possible to filter at the carrier, ISP and user levels. With a targeted postal scam you can only filter at the user level. I agree though, that the information is out there. Some scammers already have the cross-referenced data. Its not a easy problem to solve. One argument might state that is a stupidity tax and that its up to the users to filter, likely mostly do with spam. Another argument is that people have a reasonable duty to make it harder to commit the scams. For example, we do lock our doors now after all. Possible some sort of system can be developed where trust people can access the the whois data in a scriptable way. Like banks. Then again its a global problem and our local views on trusted are hard to extend overseas to someone who we can visit in person. I think if its possible its worth trying to increase the entry cost to access of the information. In some cases this might increase the transactional cost of current users, but that's life. After all people complain about speed limits all the time. Its worth considering a similar set of data to the whois database which is online: the Companies office. That includes information about private addresses, specific company information, Nicholas