> On Sat, 2009-07-04 at 04:47 +0200, gilpel@xxxxxxxxxx wrote: >> When I subscribed, I was asked for a user name. This user name appears nowhere, just my email address. It seems the user name is just a way to make you believe that your email won't be divulged. > > I don't know why you believe that. > > The sign-up page [1] makes it clear the name is optional, so I can't see how an optional thing can be a vital part of your signing up. Well, you could think that is you don't supply a name, your email address will be used to identify you. > All I see with the optional name is that I can supply a name as well as > my email address, so that if the list owner does write to me, they can > address me by name. No different from how we write e-mail addresses, in > general: OK. So, it's for list-owner to write to subscribers. But what would change if the name or username was used in the list instead of the email address? Couldn't he write to you just the same? > And you'd have to be newcomer to MAILING LISTS I no doubt am, but I can't still see what advantage tegre is to divulge the email address. >> Besides, what's the advantage of all those shenanigans to Red Hat? If I >> wanted to spam this group, I'd open an account at Altern, from there >> one at Google, from there, one at Yahoo, from there, one at Altern, from >> there one at Google, 10 times around. It would take months before all >> the addresses are exhausted. What would make sense, is asking people to >> subscribe from an address that correspond to an ISP. > > It's just as easy to knock up throwaway addresses on some ISPs. Some > ISPs are just as slack at dealing with spammers, nor getting real ID on > their users. No doubt. > There are so many mail providers, it'd be a tough job to sort out all of > which were anon webmail types and which are more discerning ISPs. > And some ISPs don't offer any mail service Quite right! For instance, in Canada, it seems that Sympatico is now more or less owned by Microsoft. So all new users get an email at Hotmail. But, once again, if divulging email addresses is not a way to stop spam, why has this modus operandi that seems to frustrate some people been adopted. Because "that's the way lists work"? > gmane is a news server, rather than a list of groups that are carried > across other news servers. I'll try this soon. > Sign up twice to the Fedora list, with two different e-mail addresses. > > On one of those subscriptions, I set the options on the Fedora list > server to NOT send out any mail. That ensures I don't get any list mail > to that subscription, and nobody's bandwidth gets wasted by any list > mail. And I set that subscription's mail (yahoo) account to delete any > mail received by it, that doesn't have a magic keyword in the subject > line. But the only mail it will receive will be the random spam. > > The other subscription sends me individual messages. I receive list mail > on my second email account. I have nothing special set up on that > account. But when I reply to any of them, the "from" address of my > replies is set as the first one. So recipients only see my address that > auto-deletes all mail. The problem with this if that spammers can use your first address. Since some computers are botnetted for sending spam, the spam may come from honest people. And, whatever happens, even spam coming from blacklisted servers has to be treated. Of course, header identification is done at the speed of light and it's certainly no concern for the likes of Google and Yahoo, but for Altern, I wonder. The service is back to normal speed today, but I suppose, once in a while, more ressources have to be added to a service that is offered for free without publicity. Really free, as in free beer. > e.g. Subscribe with ignored@yahoo and reading@yahoo. > List subscription for /ignored/ sends me no mail. > List subscription for /reading/ sends me mail. > /ignored/ Yahoo account deletes all mail without password. > /reading/ Yahoo account accepts mail. > My mail client retrieves /reading/ mail. > My mail client has ignored@yahoo configured for the *from* address. > Unless you're doing additional filtering, I don't know why you're trying > to concern yourself about POP addresses with Fedora. You don't access > Fedora mail servers directly, they mail you and you get mail from your > ISP. You mail them through your ISP. Just the same as receiving and > sending mail to anyone else. If nothing else, this should tell you what happens when you get hardly enough sleep to keep you alive. You end up having a hard time to figure up the simplest things. Sorry for this, and for sometimes being impatient. But, having not been given any indication to the contrary, I still think that it would be much better if only usernames were used. But now, thanks to your explanations I can manage the situation. You know, many people here are very helpful and come come up with tips that are really handy but, when you got something right, you've got a gift for making it clear. It's a former teacher, journalist, translator, who's telling you this. You could make a rock learn. If I ever end up using Fedora properly, I suppose any half-brained Windows user will be able too. -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
