Re: [Hangout - NYLXS] * Scraping email addresses from a public list" * : What about using bcc to prevent "scraping" email addresses ?

[Alexandre François Garreau]

Le mercredi 26 février 2020, 03:58:40 CET Mike Gerwitz a écrit :
> On Tue, Feb 25, 2020 at 14:07:42 +0000, Mancini, Sabin (DFS) wrote:
> > Mike,
> > What about using bcc to prevent "scraping" email addresses ?
> 
> All mail sent to the list would have to be hidden behind fake addresses
> generated by the mailing list.  I'm not sure what the capabilities of
> Mailman are, but would cause breakages in many other ways for people.
> 
> What is being done is unacceptable, but I don't want one bad actor to
> cause drastic changes.

The most important thing: with a *mailing-list*, it is *not* possible to 
impede scraping of mail addresses from subscribers.  This is by virtue of 
*definition*.  If it were so, it would not anymore be a *mailing* list, but 
something else.  A mailing-list is some way of getting *mails* from 
*other* people you don’t know.  It allows to hide to everybody the 
addresses of people not participating yet subscribed, but it is a 
*feature* of it that anyone within the mailing-list can get the mail 
address of anyone participating to the discussion, and bring that to 
another list, privately, publicly again, etc.

This is a very consequence from the fact mail is a federated protocol (and 
was the first).  If you do federation but hide the federated address, the 
“@” and what’s before and/or after it, it’s not federated anymore.  You’ve 
just successfully made yet another opaque centralized communication 
platform.  You can’t anymore claim it’s federated or open.  And yes, when 
it’s decentralized, horizontal, policing is harder, it’s intended to be 
so.

This is like seeing a free software be used for something you don’t like, 
and say “hey, I love free software, but here my awesome idea: what if we 
kept it free-software, but prevented certain uses, studies, modifications 
or shares of it?”, just no…