Yikes! E-mail harvesting possibility?

[curry]

Heather Williams wrote:

>I think for the moment, if the spam risk really worries you, you should mung
>your email address in some way so that it won't get quoted in usable form.
>We will continue to look at other possible solutions that don't diminish the
>value of the list.

This could help with new addresses, but won't help if someone's 
already been replied to and the damage is done; posting more or not 
won't change it.

However, even if the future list archives are moved to a service, I 
do think there is good reason to go ahead and try to do something 
about the current archives. There's a chance some addresses still 
haven't been collected yet if they are fairly recent, plus it will 
prevent additional scans and so, will very likely cut down on the 
amount of spamming that will occur in the future for the addresses in 
question.

Probably the easiest way--I know that RunRev uses password-protected 
access to some URL's, for example the list and links restricted to 
current pro subscribers. Would it be difficult to do the same for the 
RunRev archives? The password could be placed on the web page in 
human-readable form via an image or a javascript-created text, then 
we can easily get in but the bots can't.

If that way could be done, then you wouldn't have to worry about 
changing anything else. As long as the bots can't access the pages, 
it doesn't matter what's on them!

Thanks,

Curry