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Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 11:02:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu>
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
To: Dave Korn <dk AT artimi DOT com>
cc: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: [OT] PCYMTNQREAIYR, it really works.
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Note-from-DJ: This may be spam

On Thu, 23 Sep 2004, Dave Korn wrote:

> >From http://www.cdt.org/speech/spam/030319spamreport.shtml
>
> "  Major Findings
>
> Our analysis indicated that e-mail addresses posted on Web sites or in
> newsgroups attract the most spam.
> Web Sites - CDT received the most e-mails when an address was placed visibly
> on a public Web site. Spammers use software harvesting programs such as
> robots or spiders to record e-mail addresses listed on Web sites, including
> both personal Web pages and institutional (corporate or non-profit) Web
> pages.
> CDT tested two methods of obstructing address harvesting:
>
> Replacing characters in an e-mail address with human-readable equivalents,
> e.g. "example AT domain DOT com" was written "example at domain dot com;" and
> Replacing characters in an e-mail address with HTML equivalents.
> E-mail addresses posted to Web sites using these conventions did not receive
> any spam.  "

Interesting.

> ObCygwin:   This relates to and confirms some of the information on the
> cygwin website so it's not too off-topic! <g>
> (http://cygwin.com/acronyms#PCYMTNQREAIYR)
>
> ObCygwin:  Oh, alright then.
>
> Index: acronyms/index.html
> ===================================================================
> RCS file: /cvs/cygwin/htdocs/acronyms/index.html,v
> retrieving revision 1.83
> diff -u -p -r1.83 index.html
> --- acronyms/index.html	2 Sep 2004 16:34:42 -0000	1.83
> +++ acronyms/index.html	23 Sep 2004 11:21:46 -0000
> [snip]
>   _Now_ is it on-topic?

Applied with some minor rephrasing.  Thanks.

Generally speaking, no measure is completely spam-proof, except complete
erasure of e-mail addresses (which will conflict with any other legitimate
use of "@" on the list).  Spamming is more or less an industry now, and
one can imagine an industrious spammer (or spam harvester -- not the same
thing) writing a filter that looks for words like "mail archive" on web
pages and applies more elaborate spam harvesting techniques for those
pages that have them.  Still, deterring 99% of spam harvesters is better
than not deterring any at all.  Anything that helps even a little bit
should be done.
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_		pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor AT watson DOT ibm DOT com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D.
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

"Happiness lies in being privileged to work hard for long hours in doing
whatever you think is worth doing."  -- Dr. Jubal Harshaw

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