Debian and sp4m
Today i wondered why i get so much spam. Well it's simple, load you google, hit the query with my mail address (the one at free.fr), and you'll get about 300 results.
Most of those results are Debian related, i used to maintain a Debian package. So, sp4mmers, if you want to sell more vi4gra or whatever, have a look at this one for instance.
I don't understand, there are thousands of Debian developers out there, and nobody tried to solve the problem of email address collecting ?
#. phil on Tue Aug 16 10:22:08 2005
I understand this problem has no trivial solution. One could be to avoid direct contact between maintainers and users. All mails would be relayed by Debian which would build a black/white list...
#. bignose on Tue Aug 16 09:11:09 2005
It's a hard problem to solve. The more you do to obscure an email address, the more barriers you put in the way of legitimate email. It doesn't take much of a barrier before the email address is completely unusable for very useful purposes, and a pain in the rear for most others.
In the case of a package maintainer, you want that email address to be as usable as possible.