Masking email addresses in the archives
I must have missed this if it was ever discussed, but is it possible to mask the list members' email addresses in the archives?
-- Best regards, Odhiambo WASHINGTON, Nairobi,KE +254 7 3200 0004/+254 7 2274 3223 In an Internet failure case, the #1 suspect is a constant: DNS. "Oh, the cruft.", egrep -v '^$|^.*#' ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :-) [How to ask smart questions: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html]
On 5/26/25 9:47 AM, Odhiambo Washington via Mailman-users wrote:
I must have missed this if it was ever discussed, but is it possible to mask the list members' email addresses in the archives?
See https://gitlab.com/mailman/hyperkitty/-/issues/508
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
On Mon, May 26, 2025 at 5:31 PM Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> wrote:
On 5/26/25 9:47 AM, Odhiambo Washington via Mailman-users wrote:
I must have missed this if it was ever discussed, but is it possible to mask the list members' email addresses in the archives?
Thank you.
-- Best regards, Odhiambo WASHINGTON, Nairobi,KE +254 7 3200 0004/+254 7 2274 3223 In an Internet failure case, the #1 suspect is a constant: DNS. "Oh, the cruft.", egrep -v '^$|^.*#' ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :-) [How to ask smart questions: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html]
Odhiambo Washington via Mailman-users writes:
I must have missed this if it was ever discussed, but is it possible to mask the list members' email addresses in the archives?
I saw Mark's response and Danil's issue, but I would recommend not doing it even if available. People often do want to contact the author of a post, and sometimes the CCs, but it's not very effective in preventing spammers from harvesting.
If you control subscription and generally trust the the subscribers, then making the archives private can be moderately effective. Anonymization is more effective, but of course you completely give up the ability of subscribers to contact posters. And even then, many of those addresses you've masked are going to be available to the spammers because they're going to be in hacked address books and random S3 buckets with lax permissions and on lists that you don't run, or shared/sold by unscrupulous Internet sites.
The other thing you can do (if you're confident in your own spam filters) is to assign your subscribers addresses at your domain, and forward them on. But Gmail probably does spam filtering better. And of course your traffic will increase to a greater or lesser extent.
-- GNU Mailman consultant (installation, migration, customization) Sirius Open Source https://www.siriusopensource.com/ Software systems consulting in Europe, North America, and Japan
On Mon, May 26, 2025 at 6:38 PM Stephen J. Turnbull <steve@turnbull.jp> wrote:
Odhiambo Washington via Mailman-users writes:
I must have missed this if it was ever discussed, but is it possible to mask the list members' email addresses in the archives?
I saw Mark's response and Danil's issue, but I would recommend not doing it even if available. People often do want to contact the author of a post, and sometimes the CCs, but it's not very effective in preventing spammers from harvesting.
If you control subscription and generally trust the the subscribers, then making the archives private can be moderately effective. Anonymization is more effective, but of course you completely give up the ability of subscribers to contact posters. And even then, many of those addresses you've masked are going to be available to the spammers because they're going to be in hacked address books and random S3 buckets with lax permissions and on lists that you don't run, or shared/sold by unscrupulous Internet sites.
The other thing you can do (if you're confident in your own spam filters) is to assign your subscribers addresses at your domain, and forward them on. But Gmail probably does spam filtering better. And of course your traffic will increase to a greater or lesser extent.
I have realized that much as this particular list's archives are publicly accessible, no one can view the members' addresses unless they log in to Postorius. That is safe enough. Initially I was worried because I was able to open a thread, click on the poster and see their email address, but I had forgotten that I was logged in as the List Admin.
-- Best regards, Odhiambo WASHINGTON, Nairobi,KE +254 7 3200 0004/+254 7 2274 3223 In an Internet failure case, the #1 suspect is a constant: DNS. "Oh, the cruft.", egrep -v '^$|^.*#' ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :-) [How to ask smart questions: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html]
participants (3)
-
Mark Sapiro -
Odhiambo Washington -
Stephen J. Turnbull