[no subject]

Your efforts are greatly appreciated.

> 1. Most of the addresses have already been harvested once an address
> gets on a spam list it is traded around the spammer community. Pandora's
> box is wide open.

That is correct. However, changing the system DOES give us an opportunity to 
change our subscription email address - which will stay clean in the future.

> 2. Google probably has indexed the whole list and has that cached.

Yes. However, Google will "let it go" in 3 months or so (I forgot how long it 
takes them to update, but I think in the past is seemed about 3 months).

> 3. I suspect there are other archives lurking out there

Sure. Like <a  rel="nofollow" href="http://web.archive.org/collections/web.html";>http://web.archive.org/collections/web.html</a>
But, *they* don't store much - not even images apparently. Other archives 
probably exist, however I don't believe that there would be an archive of the 
ALE for each month - kept &quot;forever&quot;  (except the ALE archive itself)

&gt; 4. The old archives still have email addrs in them

Yes. The local Linux group successfully removed email addresses. It *may* be 
possible for me to acquire the script that they used to do it. It was done 
recently.

&gt; If someone wants to write a little perl script that traverses a
&gt; directory structure, takes each html file, obfuscates any email addrs;
&gt; writes that file to /tmp/something; then moves that file back into place
&gt; - I'll run it on the archives. Make sure the file perms are 644. 

If no one responds to do this within a few days, I volunteer to contact the 
other LUG for the script or (worst case) have one written. However, it seems 
like there are programmers on the list that could whip out a solution REALLY 
quickly. 

Someone offered something similar to this on the list awhile ago, and I use it 
often: perl -pi -e 's/\$oldvariable/\$newvariable/;' ./*

Surely this could be converted (by someone who knows perl well) and then 
looped over the files in a matter of 30 minutes or less (to write and 
execute).

Thank you for your response on this matter. 
While it doesn't seem to be an &quot;extremely important problem,&quot; at the least our 
leaving raw emails in the archive seems like the tacit approval of spam:

&quot;You have [. . . .] only re-harvested and even older thread whereby afterwards 
[NOTHING] was done. [. . . Further,] you have no grounds now to complain 
about how others use information (good or bad) that you have previously 
posted in an open forum.&quot; - Jim P.

Hopefully this time we will recognize that we should reduce our exposure to 
spam and followup with action. If no one can do it more quickly, I will 
volunteer my &quot;programming skills.&quot; :)
-- 
Wishing you Happiness, Joy and Laughter,
Drew Brown
<a  rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ChangingLINKS.com";>http://www.ChangingLINKS.com</a>


</pre>
<!--X-Body-of-Message-End-->
<!--X-MsgBody-End-->
<!--X-Follow-Ups-->
<hr>
<!--X-Follow-Ups-End-->
<!--X-References-->
<ul><li><strong>References</strong>:
<ul>
<li><strong><a name="00008" href="msg00008.html">[ale]OT It begins...</a></strong>
<ul><li><em>From:</em> groups at ChangingLINKS.com (ChangingLINKS.com)</li></ul></li>
<li><strong><a name="00093" href="msg00093.html">[ale]OT It begins...</a></strong>
<ul><li><em>From:</em> jcf at primeharbor.com (Chris Farris)</li></ul></li>
</ul></li></ul>
<!--X-References-End-->
<!--X-BotPNI-->
<ul>
<li>Prev by Date:
<strong><a href="msg00084.html">[ale] I bought Libranet 2.8.1 yesterday. One word, awesome!!</a></strong>
</li>
<li>Next by Date:
<strong><a href="msg00095.html">Update:  Re: [ale] eMachines AMD64 notebook</a></strong>
</li>
<li>Previous by thread:
<strong><a href="msg00093.html">[ale]OT It begins...</a></strong>
</li>
<li>Next by thread:
<strong><a href="msg00097.html">[ale]OT It begins...</a></strong>
</li>
<li>Index(es):
<ul>
<li><a href="maillist.html#00094"><strong>Date</strong></a></li>
<li><a href="threads.html#00094"><strong>Thread</strong></a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>

<!--X-BotPNI-End-->
<!--X-User-Footer-->
<!--X-User-Footer-End-->
</body>
</html>