Re: [chairs] SPAM

["David RR Webber" <david@drrw.info>]

Karl,

Replacing the address with the OASIS # satisfies your
requirement.  It's basically impossible since there is
no correlation.

The only way back is if you have the OASIS membership
/ number xref list.

My guess is you could setup a simple Java program or
XSLT script to do this replacement stripping...

DW.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Karl F. Best" <karl.best@oasis-open.org>
To: "Eve L. Maler" <Eve.Maler@Sun.COM>
Cc: <chairs@lists.oasis-open.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2004 12:10 PM
Subject: Re: [chairs] SPAM


> Yeah, we thought about something like that, i.e. replacement of the
> address with some sort of code. But in order to be effective it must be
> costly (i.e. impossible for a machine, requires a human) to re-convert
> large quantities of addresses, but simple for a human to re-convert a
> single address.
>
>  From the first Slashdot example, at least, it would be simple for a
> human to look at the address and create a simple rule for how to
> recreate the original.
>
> -Karl
>
> p.s. <chuckle> the rotating banner at the top of the Slashdot page when
> I viewed it was an O'Reilly ad for a book on creating spiders and
> bots... </>
>
>
>
>
> Eve L. Maler wrote:
> > Why not just use a mechanistic, but variable, means of disguising the
> > email address the way Slashdot does?  An example appears here:
> >
> >   http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=103884&cid=8848779
> >
> > The email link shows up as:
> >
> >   mailto:heironymouscoward%40yah%5B%20%5Dcom%20%5B'oo.'%20in%20gap%5D
> >
> > A human can decode this as necessary, but a machine has a much tougher
> > time.  Here's another:
> >
> >   http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=103883&cid=8848358
> >
> > The email link shows up as:
> >
> >   mailto:dgorman%40nosPaM.arete.cc
> >
> > Etc.  I believe the engine behind Slashdot is open-source, so maybe that
> > (or part of it, anyway) can be used.  Though I wonder about its
> > effectiveness if a spammer can locate all the disguise techniques in a
> > file somewhere...
> >
> >     Eve
> >
> > Karl F. Best wrote:
> >
> >> Chairs:
> >>
> >> I'll open another can of worms and jump into this :-)
> >>
> >> I agree with you wholeheartedly, Duane, that this is a problem. I'll
> >> bet that I get more spam than you do (few hundred a day). And I have
> >> no doubt that all this is because of spammers harvesting addresses
> >> from our list archives.
> >>
> >> Of course a knee-jerk reaction would be to close off the archives so
> >> that nobody can get to them, but given that the OASIS philosophy is
> >> openness and accountability we need to keep things open and accessible.
> >>
> >> There seems to be two possible solutions: either disguise the
> >> addresses stored in the archives, or to somehow block access so that
> >> only a human can get through. (I don't think that we want to go down
> >> the path of an offensive strategy such as what Duane suggests.)
> >>
> >> Lacking a foolproof Turing test to allow only human access to the
> >> archives, I think the best and easiest solution will probably be to
> >> disguise the email addresses attached to each message so that whatever
> >> is harvested in unusable by spammers. The disguise would have to be
> >> such that the harvester would not be able to accurately or easily
> >> recreate the address. Obviously substituting the word "at" for the @
> >> sign isn't going to fool anybody for very long. But whatever we do may
> >> not disguise the actual identity of the sender; we need to know who
> >> sent the message.
> >>
> >> A final question is whether it is necessary for a person to be able to
> >> respond to a message he found in the archives; i.e. does the guy on
> >> the street need to be able to figure out how to respond to Duane when
> >> he reads something thet Duane wrote? Perhaps this requirement is not
> >> so important, as TC members already know how to respond to the TC
> >> list, and the guy on the street is already given instructions for
> >> sending a comment to the TC.
> >>
> >> If the above is acceptable then perhaps I could suggest (and please
> >> note, this is just a strawman for discussion, not an official OASIS
> >> proposal) that we delete some portion of the address after the @ sign.
> >> We could delete all of it, leaving just "duane@", for example, but
> >> then we loose any idea about what company Duane was at, whether Yellow
> >> Dragon or Adobe (and it may be important for IPR reasons to know). So
> >> maybe we could leave the first couple of characters after the @ sign,
> >> resulting in "duane@ye" or "duane@ad". If we left three characters
> >> then we'd get "sun" and "ibm" etc. which would make it possible to
> >> reconstruct the address. But then again with only two we would get
"hp".
> >>
> >> So, any comments on whether it should be a requirement for a human to
> >> still be able to figure out the email address? And, if that's not a
> >> requirement, what do you think of my above suggestion?
> >>
> >> -Karl
> >>
> >> p.s. Duane, I hope you don't mind me using you as the example :-)
> >
>
>
> -- 
> =================================================================
> Karl F. Best
> Vice President, OASIS
> office  +1 978.667.5115 x206     mobile +1 978.761.1648
> karl.best@oasis-open.org      http://www.oasis-open.org
>
>