Date   : Thu, 14 Aug 2003 00:26:25 +0100
From   : Jon Ripley <beeb@...>
Subject: Re: Over 150,000 hits to the BBC Micro Mailing List Archive

As the backwards were replies, I've had to rearrange this message into
the right order and delete most of it so bear with me.

>  "Chris Thornley" wrote
> > Hi,
> > Have you removed or altered nay of the email addresses in the archive
> > because I have noticed a massive increase in SPAM over the last month of
> > so. I'm now getting 30+ SPAM messages a day.

Sorry to hear you are getting a lot of spam.

If you visit the archive you will see that all correctly specified email
addresses have been reduced to myemail@... to avoid the heinous actions
of the unscrupulous spammers out there.

In message <003001c361ea$2547a640$55a74c51@...> colin wrote:

> I have a feeling that any popular newsgroup can be infiltrated by the
> spammers - if it comes up as a top search, then they join and just copy our
> e-mails from our letters. I too have noticed a huge increase in spam - in
> fact while I was away on a 4 day break, I got 260 spam e-mails - is this a
> record?

Newsgroups are one of the best places to get email addresses, one email
address at my domain, used only once to send a message to a newsgroup
about three years ago, now receives at least 20 spam each day.

Luckily this mailing list is not a newsgroup if it were then all our
email addresses would be free for the harvest. 

> Fortunately I managed to delete them all using Mailwasher (free).
> I run a local charity site and that's started getting loads of spam and that
> site ain't a member of anything but it does come up in the top 10 when
> searching for the particular cause!

I'm happy to hear that your search rankings have gone up, though this
is just a happy side effect. If there are an email addresses available
on your web site then they too may be harvested by spammers. This is
unavoidable and is the price we all have to pay for revealing our email
address even once to the wrong people.

Also if there is a web site at http://www.mydomain.somewhere.uk then
spammers will often send spam to random.address@...

To everybody on this mailing list. IMHO, I doubt that anyone has
recieved any spam as a result of the archive, for the reasons that the
main contact email address for the archive appears hundreds of times on
the site and as yet has received no spam and that all valid email
addresses on the site have been reduced to myname@...

Regards,
Jon R.
-- 
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