Re: The utilitiy of IP is at stake here

On Sat, 31 May 2003 16:44:32 +0200, Anthony Atkielski 
<anthony(_at_)atkielski(_dot_)com>  said:

> They must either harvest them or guess them.  For non-obvious e-mail
> addresses that are never published, they cannot practically do either of
> these, and so the addresses will not be spammed.
"that are never published".

That's one *TALL* order for a useful e-mail address.

That means that you can't join a mailing list for (say) cancer survivors,
or for people with persian cats, or for your church, or for other immigrants
from the same country as you... because then your address might be published.

Sort of limits the usefulness of e-mail.

That means that you can't use the Internet to buy things at a site that wants
an e-mail address to send you things like shipping confirmations.

Sort of limits the usefulness of e-mail even more.

For that matter, even if you're NOT on a mailing list, and don't purchase
things online, you have to worry that *NONE* of your correspondents use a
certain worm-prone MUA - if *they* get hit by a worm that finds your e-mail
address and a lists' e-mail address, suddenly your address has been used as the
faked source and published on a list you've never heard of.  Note that there's
a synergy here with the list issue above, if you ever post to a list....

And then the trawlers come through, and the spamming begins.

Sort of limits the usefulness of e-mail to a ridiculous level.

So it's not safe to join a mailing list, it's not safe to use it for any
e-commerce, and it's not safe to use it to communicate with the 85% of the
people who use the problem MUA.

Now what were you saying about useful?

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