Messages in this thread |  | | Subject | Re: News gateway problem | Date | Wed, 20 Nov 1996 10:20:58 +0000 | From | ". Tethys " SYSTEM ADMIN " X" <> |
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>> If you place false email addresses into your headers then if your >> traffic enters the UK at least you will be committing an offence.
Which offence would that be, Alan? If you do it to impersonate someone else, then I can see the problem. If you're giving a non-existant email address to hide your identity, what offence are you committing? Do we have specific internet laws, or does it fall under some other legislation (i.e. would you be committing the same offence by posting a letter with a false return address?)
>Hmmm, most of the spammers do that. Has one been prosecuted?
Unlikely. Most are outside the UK, so trying to prosecute them under UK laws would prove extremely difficult. Despite various extradition treaties, we have a hard enough time getting murderers/rapists etc. that have fled overseas sent to the UK for trial. The chances of it happening because someone faked their email address is not very high :-)
>I still think the gateway and archives should obscure addresses.
I disagree with this completely. I *want* my email address in the headers so people can reply to me directly. Not all responses to my messages are appropriate for the list as a whole. If someone wants to reply to a point in one of my messages that specifically affects me and no-one else, why waste bandwith sending it to the thousands of others around the world that read the list?
>I find spam in my mailbox every day, all of it because this list >exposes my address on usenet.
Wrong. If that were the case, I would also have a mailbox full of spam, and I don't. I'm currently subscribed to 10 mailing lists (mostly Linux oriented on vger), and the last time I was spammed was over 2 years ago. My guess is that spammers have got your email address from elsewhere, and you're blaming it on this list because you see it as the most likely source of the problem.
Tet
-- --==<< ``Reality is for those who can't handle science fiction'' >>==-- --------------------+--------------+---------------------------------------- tethys@ml.com | Micro$oft: | Linux, the choice of a GNU generation. tet@astradyne.co.uk | Just say no! | See http://www.uk.linux.org for details
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