Subject: Re: ID publication, Spam, & IETF Mailing lists

From: "Durand, Alain" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 09:01:54 -0400

David,

So you are advocating for non standards methods to do our standard work... ;-)

Maybe we should actually work on a real standardized obfuscation method that could be use in all the places the Brian is talking about but still could not be easily reversed by spammers...

   - Alain.

----- Original Message -----
From: David Kessens <[email-masked]>
To: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked] <[email-masked]>; David Mitton <[email-masked]>
Sent: Tue Jun 27 06:08:43 2006
Subject: Re: ID publication, Spam, & IETF Mailing lists

Brian,

On Tue, Jun 27, 2006 at 10:09:18AM +0200, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> James Kempf wrote:
> >Well, one solution to the spam problem would be to publish email 
> >addresses in a form that isn't easily harvestable, like "jon baz at foo 
> >dot com". 
> 
> Personal opinion: it just isn't worth the hassle. One way or another,
> your address *will* be harvested, and obfuscation doesn't have a significant
> effect.

My personal experience is different: One of the additional job
benefits that I received when joining the IESG was an order of
magnitude more spam due to the fact that my mail address was listed
on the IETF website. Before that, I was always careful not to list my
address, use a special address or to obvuscate it.

As for my private address, I hardly receive any spams on it as I have
been very careful as well not to list it or only list it using an
obfuscation method.

I don't see any reason why our IETF contributors should get the same
benefit of reeceiving extra spams in their mailbox because they took
the effort to contribute work to the IETF.

Obvuscating is obviously not perfect, but it does help. Especially if
the poster/draft author can choose his/her own obvuscating method
instead of using a standardized method.

David Kessens
---

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From: James Carlson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 09:17:23 -0400

Durand, Alain writes:
> Maybe we should actually work on a real standardized obfuscation
> method that could be use in all the places the Brian is talking
> about but still could not be easily reversed by spammers...

If it can't be reversed easily, then how does it serve its original
purpose of providing a contact address for discussion?  Spammers have
the time and inclination to figure out how to decode those addresses.

I agree with Brian that this is a waste of time.  It would be much
better to work at filtering away spam and encouraging measures against
the spammers than to make the 'references' section useless.

-- 
James Carlson, KISS Network                    <[email-masked]>
Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive         71.232W   Vox +1 781 442 2084
MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757   42.496N   Fax +1 781 442 1677

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From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 13:15:19 -0400

> So you are advocating for non standards methods to do our standard work... ;-)
Right -- put Javascript in I-Ds and read them via Web browsers...

Yes, I'm kidding.

		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

---

From: Juergen Schoenwaelder <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 00:57:19 +0200

> about but still could not be easily reversed by spammers...

Sounds like the perfect topic for an April 1st RFC to me. Any
volunteers?

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder		    International University Bremen
<http://www.eecs.iu-bremen.de/>	    P.O. Box 750 561, 28725 Bremen, Germany

---

From: Juergen Schoenwaelder <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 00:57:19 +0200

/js