Geeklog Forums

Okay, so this is a complaint and a warning.I like geeklog, and I trusted Geeklog not to release my email address to spammers. I just went through a major effort to alert all my customers of a new email address and carefully protect my new email from spammers by not posting it on the net.As I said, I trusted geeklog. Mistake.I posted one message to a developers list, and the geeklog folks archived it to the net along with an unaltered email address. This was two days ago, maybe three. I just received my first spam email and I blame the geeklog developers email archive.My email address is my property. No matter the good intentions and good work of the geekloggers, they don't have the right to put it on the net. I asked for it to be removed from the net, and was basically told I should have known better. Well, now I do. I hope others can learn from my loss and do not use the geeklog email lists if you want to protect your email account.I still want it removed. I know it would be possible for someone with shell access to the archive. A simple grep and edit of the originating file would do it.You can still save me a major headache by removing posts with my email. (One post and one reply). Please do so.

You <i>should</i> have known better... seriously. And to conclude after sending your email to all your customers that it was Geeklogs fault is a bit naieve at best. In any case, if you expect to keep an email address 100% spam free, the ONLY way to do it is not use it... ever. Spare us your whining, please...

Hiding email addresses IS a SIMPLE matter, and most websites, including archives, do it. Everyone needs to work together to keep emails away from spammers. Geeklog email lists should do it too. It is not the fault of the person sending to an email list. It is the fault of the maintainers of the archive. Just because email addresses will eventually filter onto spam lists doesn't justify releasing them to the public when you don't have to. Look at the bottom of this screen. It says: <b>Your email address will NOT be made public.</b> Of course, this is not the email-list, but the sentiment is clear, isn't it? I think a person should expect that their email address will be kept private.

This from http://www.mail-archive.com/faq.html "The Mail Archive ... we strip out, scramble, or obfuscate email addresses from message headers and bodies. Yet we still provide a way for people to reply to an archived message, using their regular email software. This feat is achieved with a special POST protected CGI gateway which returns a mailto: URL to the user agent. This technique is extremely effective in blocking generic spam harvesting robots; for more information, see Mullane's Spambot Beware guide. The effectiveness of our spam-blocking preventative measures are monitored by spambot trap addresses like honeypot@jab.org. " So, everybody stop the ego wars and fix teh problem, eh?

Out of curiosity, I did a search for my email address on Google and the first result is in the Geeklog.net mail archives.

Mooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! I am balling my eyes out for you! Moo!

Just do what I do! Never use your real e-mail address. First off your business e-mail address should be used for your business only and not for Geeklog.net 2) For your friends and family use a diferent address. 3) Then for the rest of your bazaro stuff and receipts/subscriptions use a different e-mail address or LEAVE non important account with old address you rarely check. 4) The alternative way- set up a script on your server where you can go, enter in your pop 3 user name and password- and CLEAR out your inbox. If you know this is an e-mail address you use for JUNK only and only JUNK will come into it. This allows space on the server. And you don't need any mail programs or anything to actually sit and wait and download the spam. It's simple. 5) Never merge business and pleasure or anything else in the same inbox. Infact, your customer's should NOT or NEVER have to go through the crapola of you telling them your e-mail address changed. Simply have them go to your site, fill out a form and the form comes to what ever inbox you want it too. Change it as often as you want. You take control. They don't have to know. At least until you reply any how. Never put your customer's through all of that strain. AND number 6) remember that a spider of other programs online can get your info and all e-mail address from you simply going to a website or wall street journal even. So people can type in a web address and collect at random the e-mail of your machine. For safe browsing use the following link. I hope this was common sense and helpful. But you can't point the finger at the spammer's. There are two many to fight off. For internet use account try a free account at: http://www.atozasia.com There are many more. Use http://www.copernic.com basic service and do a search. And for safe browsing use this link: http://www.anonymization.net/ And download their tool bar and shop from it. It protects your e-mail addy from being relased. And don't sign up for anything. Nor asked to be removed. It only leads to more spam. Send E-Mail with out having to log in any where ever FREE: http://www.instant-email.com/ SEE IF YOU ARE LISTED BY E-MAIL OR ANYTHING ELSE EVEN GOOGLE: http://www.elfqrin.com/mine/EgoSurfer.html Give your PC or MAC a wacky name. And change the hour in the clock to something in Mars or like Japan time if you are in the US. Then get a spoofer. And use your privacy browser. Then run a disk cleaner and reboot. I like my privacy! I agree with you in every way. But my point is, if you can't fight them- DEFEND yourself AGAINST it! http://www.Ad-aware.com (Spyware removal etc... FREE download) Use Panda Anti Virus! It ranked the best for the last yr on the best PC magazines. And by MAXIMUM PC Magazine. Hope this helped you and good luck with your problem. However I do agree with one of the comments you got which was: To avoid 100% of all SPAM is to not use your e-mail account. I hope the tips and links helped. SMILE! You are not alone. There are many of us who are sick of spam. When I was a newbie and signed up for everything I remember closing out 4 inboxes and 3 ISP's. Thanks to Spam. Until I learned to defend myself. And how to avoid it. If you are really in the mood you can do a WHOIS LOOK UP on the spam's site. Report it to the local police in their area depending how bad the spam is or if they are threatning you, report it to the registration domain company, hosting company, and the company then go through and report it through google, BBB, comsumer affairs, internet fraud, fbi if you have too. I have only had to go that far 2. Usually I get spam and I delete it. But once when I was a newbie I asked to be removed. Then I got lots of porn and stuff I can't mention. Sent me links, bombed me etc... And crashed me. These people were crazy. I did all of the above and pressed charges. I droped them after but I know those people won't do that again. They just took it too far. I started defending myself. I don't care how mad people scream about how dumb it is to complain about SPAM. The fact is, it's abuse. Point is, instead of whining, DEFEND yourself. Don't let them take control. And I suggest that every 4 years at least you get a new e-mail address any way. Or an account with 5 accounts. Every 1 one, change it. Keep your privacy. Always use the same fake first name and last name and birthday, address and zip. Only real when shopping. No one has the right to know anything. Tweak out yout keys through REGEDIT and stick in other names. So your computer thinks although microsoft has and was registered with the correct info, the the web online EVERYONE will now have a wrong NAME! I control my online privacy. Not any hack and slash, hacker and spammer. Take control. Good luck and assure yourself of your victory. Remember, don't BLAME ANYONE BUT YOUR SELF FOR SPAM> YOU CAN TAKE CONTROL! :-)

I fully support bobtreu's comments. I think Geeklog should pull all its mail archives off the net right now and fix the problem. When the lists were over on sourceforge, email addresses were protected in the archives. Sourceforge masks addresses in the head and body of emails. The only thing you see is the first couple of letters not the entire address. I assumed the same protection was being done after the move. When I signed up on this site, I used a brand new throw away address. Unlike bobtreu, I only used it for Geeklog -- the site and the mailing list. Within the very first week, I started getting spam and the amount kept growing. Some of which contained nasty viruses. I deleted that address and created a new one. The same thing happened over again. So, I deleted the second and created a third. When I didn't get any spam on the third one, I had no idea why. Now thanks to him I do. I foolishly sent one email each to the mailing list using the first two addresses but not the third one. Before this, I thought some spambot was collecting addresses off this site. Never did I think that Geeklog who places security as number one in its design would put our email addresses on the net to be picked up by all search engines as well as slimy spam bots. I'm glad bobtreu brought this issue up. Unless this is fixed, I for one will never email the lists again. Any new person should be told right up front. You better create a throw away that you literally throw away after asking any questions on Geeklog's lists. As for the guy who posted all the helpful tips, that's very nice of you. However, the real problem here is Geeklog is posting people's full email addresses on its site to be picked up by all bots. Most people probably had no idea this was occurring. I use a number of techniques to reduce the amount of spam I get to near zero. I use throwaways on a couple other Sourceforge maling lists and have never gotten any spam on those. You all need to fix this problem.

First of all, this is not at all a security issue, it is a privacy issue. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the nature of email is to be an open, public means of communication. Email is useless if no one knows you address. "My email address is my property. No matter the good intentions and good work of the geekloggers, they don't have the right to put it on the net." But as soon as you used that email address to post a message to the mailing list you're giving up a lot of control. You have no way of knowing who is subscribed to the mailing list. Personally I don't think the list would be usefull if I couldn't send personal emails to the people who post to the list. All that being said there is an easy solution. Get some SPAM filtering software. There is plenty of free software out there that does a good job (and even more you can pay for...ever get the SPAM selling SPAM blocking software? I have). If you're really concerned about this then don't use your real email address when posting to the Geeklog.net mailing list. Just use a throwaway address of some kind. If you don't like the way the mailing list is run, and none of the solutions mentioned on this page make you happy, then just don't use the list. There are pleny of other ways to communicate with the developers and the rest of Geeklog Community (web site (stories/commends), gplugs forums, personal email, etc.). -Vinny

I said I *Like* geeklog. I have repeatedly said I appreciated the work of the developers and the post to the developers was a contribution of code. I didn't even post it myself to the public email list. I posted to the private developers list and they forwarded it to a public list. It is not fair to categorize my post as "Hate Mail". It is a legitimate issue and could/should be addressed. A few people have suggested that there are ways I can defend myself against Spam. I know them all, thanks. Vinnie says this is a Privacy issue, not a Security issue. Part of Security is protecting privacy. A very big part. If a website says it will protect your email address, as this one clearly does, and then it makes your email address available to the world, that is a Security issue. The fact that some people choose to make fun of the complaint doesn't make the complaint "Hate Mail". I repeat, I LIKE GEEKLOG. Geeklog strives to take security seriously. Other email archives protect email addresses and have done so for years. Saying Geeklog should do so is not *Whining*. Personally, if I had done this to someone, I would have apologized and tried to fix it, because I recognize it is wrong. I would not have blamed my user for it. Bob

I did not mean to imply at all that privacy and security are not inter-related. I think the big misunderstanding here is that the web site (run with geeklog) and the mailing list software (run with mailman) aren't related. The web site keeps your email address private, there is no such protection on the mailing lists. Reading the other posts, I realize you knew this already. But you seem pretty angry, and I don't think you have strong cause to be. Mailing lists have never been a forum in which privacy (or security if you'd prefer) is ensured. Even with other protections in place, anyone who is subscribed to the list could take your email address and give is to hundreds of SPAM companies. The only real solution to maintain the privacy of your email address is to use another method of communicating (this web site, a geeklog forums, etc). I realize my previous post came off anit-hate-mail'ish, which isn't what I intended. I just wanted to state that you can't expect privacy from a mailing list, which is what I'm trying to restate here more clearly. -Vinny

last I heard is if you are not a developer, don't post to the developer list. you can't self appoint yourself. another thing is that every individual is responsible for security, using an email address that is intended by you to be extremely private to post to a list you have no control over shows poor judgement on your part. Fools love to blame others for their own stupidity. no offense.

People who throw insults at others, then claim "no offense" are idiots. No offense.