Post real email addresses if you want reply.

[Bob]

To Everybody:

If you really want a reply to a technical question, post your REAL email
address. I have seen several worthwhile projects and questions posted, but
the poster doesn't have the guts to supply a real return address.

[email protected] and other such return addresses are bogus, and a waste of
everybody's time that seriously use newsgroups.

If anybody has a serious technical question, I am always more than happy to
give my wisdom or point others in the direction to someone that can address
their problem.

My background is engineering, manufacturer and building contractor, with a
particular interest in renewable energy.

No SPAM please.

Bob
[email protected]

 

[SmartyPants]

If you really want a reply to a technical question, post your REAL email
address.

In a perfect world, Bob, yes. In this world of address harvesting bots, no
way. Addresses have to be disguised for the bots, but understandable by
humans. You said you did not want spam... neither do we. One of my
favorite signatures seen in a newsgroup was something like:

"Remove your clothes to respond to me"
[email protected]

Bob, thank you for your offer to help. That truly is appreciated.

 

[Robert Morein]

To Everybody:

If you really want a reply to a technical question, post your REAL email
address. I have seen several worthwhile projects and questions posted, but
the poster doesn't have the guts to supply a real return address.

Correction, Bob.
My email address is [email protected]
It has nothing to do with cowardice, and everything to do with spam.
You don't need my email address. Post your answer to the group.

Any questions, call me at (215) 646-4894
Bob Morein

 

[Dave Hinz]

and why would you need a good email address for a post on usenet. it's
awfully rude to ask a question in a group and then expect the answers to
be emailed to you...might be more than one person who wants the answer

The person providing the answer gets to decide how, and if, to answer.
If you limit yourself to public responses only, you are likely going to
miss out on useful advice that someone would have mailed.

If you want to improve your chances of getting your problem answered,
get an email account with some filtering & use a real address, or at least
make it something that doesn't take a massive amount of screwing around
to figure out how to demunge it. It just takes a few times of having a
well-written, not trivial response end up bouncing back, before people
won't bother doing it anymore.

 

[Danno]

Correction, Bob.
My email address is [email protected]
It has nothing to do with cowardice, and everything to do with spam.
You don't need my email address. Post your answer to the group.

Any questions, call me at (215) 646-4894
Bob Morein

For me, it also has to do with accuracy and sharing of information. While
Bob's advice is probably wise and well-intended, I would prefer it be made
public, so that:
1> It can be reviewed and questioned by peers in the NG. This affords me the
ability to see alternate perspectives, not just Bob's. It also makes sure that
Bob doesn't simply throw something "off the cuff", so to speak, which may not
be entirely accurate. If Bob has misunderstood something and offers it as
experienced advice, it can be corrected by others who know better.
2> It is publically archived, so I can search for it later. Additionally,
because it is posted publically, if there is any debate (see 1>), that
discussion is also available.
Ultimately, the responder must choose whether or not they feel comfortable
posting to a public forum. Now, Bob, for instance, may not feel secure enough
in his knowledge to post publically, so he'll only help through email. Or maybe
he's just sick of the extraneous crap that the Usenet seems to promote from
time to time <grin>, and doesn't feel like debating the "You-can't-do-that-in-
this-newsgroup" argument, yet again. If that's the case, well, just pick and
choose the queires you're into, and ignore the rest.
Personally, I'm OK with posting incorrect information/advice and then being
corrected.

 

[Bob F.]

To Everybody:

If you really want a reply to a technical question, post your REAL email
address. I have seen several worthwhile projects and questions posted, but
the poster doesn't have the guts to supply a real return address.

[email protected] and other such return addresses are bogus, and a waste of
everybody's time that seriously use newsgroups.

If anybody has a serious technical question, I am always more than happy to
give my wisdom or point others in the direction to someone that can address
their problem.

My background is engineering, manufacturer and building contractor, with a
particular interest in renewable energy.

No SPAM please.

Bob
[email protected]

Hey Chief,
If your information is so valuable, shouldn't everyone be allowed to
partake of your responses? The point of this newsgroup is for everyone to
learn, and directing your responses to a personal email addresses robs
everyone of the nuggets of experience that might be found in your response.
Sincerely,
[email protected]

 

[Dave Hinz]

If your information is so valuable, shouldn't everyone be allowed to
partake of your responses? The point of this newsgroup is for everyone to
learn, and directing your responses to a personal email addresses robs
everyone of the nuggets of experience that might be found in your response.

If the point of a question is to get answers, then why limit your chance
of getting an answer by taking away an option the person answering might
use? The train of thought isn't going to be "Oh, I can't answer by email
so I'll send it public", it's "Oh, I can't send it by email so screw it."

 

[Steve Spence]

Many folks do not appreciate a private response to a public question. If
it's asked in a public forum, the response should go there as well. I use a
real addy, as folks often ask me privately for related or unrelated info.
I'm one who does not mind being privately responded to. Some do mind, and
therefore use a munged addy.

--
Steve Spence
Renewable energy and sustainable living
http://www.green-trust.org
Discuss vegetable oil and biodiesel
powered diesels at
http://www.veggievan.org/discuss/

 

[Jesse]

If you really want a reply to a technical question, post your REAL email
address. I have seen several worthwhile projects and questions posted, but
the poster doesn't have the guts to supply a real return address.

I used my real email address and now get 200 X rated emails a day.
Can no longer use my real ISP account.

 

[Steve Spence]

Norton makes a package to eliminate spam. So do many others. It's sad that
tools like these are necessary, but we have to live with it.


--
Steve Spence
Renewable energy and sustainable living
http://www.green-trust.org
Discuss vegetable oil and biodiesel
powered diesels at
http://www.veggievan.org/discuss/

 

[Dave Hinz]

I had the same thing happen and I lost all reasonable use of an e-mail
address as a result. But in my case, it was Korean spam, 40 to 100
indecipherable spams per day. Why Korean? I have no idea.

I use spamcop to blacklist any email from Korea, China, Nigeria, and
most of South America. I don't kwow anyone in those countries,
and I get thousands of spam a week from there. There are lots of
options out there to block the crap.

As an experiment, last month I posted under a different email
address. Within 2 hours of using it unmunged for a Usenet post,
I was getting ...not spams, but viruses. It took several days before
spammers started using it, but whatever virus is out there harvesting
Usenet addresses (!!!???) was pretty quick about it. It's the 'click
on this executable to get the latest Windows update' one, which of
course doesn't impress my machines at all.

Any email you put out there will be harvested and spammed, and
harvested and have viruses sent to it. It's kind of a tradeoff
between making yourself hard to reach, vs. concern about the virus.
If you do a server-side filtering like Spamcop.net, or spamassassin
if you're on pretty much anything other than a Windows server, you can
catch nearly all of the crap. I get zero viruses, and only 1-2% of the
spam sent to me in my inbox, the rest gets held in a bucket that I
occasionally check (never anything good in there, ever) and dump out.

There are ways to deal with spam and viruses that don't involve making
yourself impossible to reach.

Dave Hinz

 

[Fred B. McGalliard]

....

As an experiment, last month I posted under a different email
address. Within 2 hours of using it unmunged for a Usenet post,
I was getting ...not spams, but viruses.

And as near as I can tell one of the viruses picked up my EMail address and
is using it to falsify me as the source of it's messages. So I get a
blizzard of Emails from servers with messages like "couldn't deliver" or
"there was a virus attached". Now my biggest problem is that mail I want to
get often ends up filtered. What a pain. Can we move Spamming and Virus
creation up to executable offenses?

 

[Dave Hinz]

...

And as near as I can tell one of the viruses picked up my EMail address and
is using it to falsify me as the source of it's messages.

Yes; every recent virus does this - none of them are from who they claim
to be from. They'll open the Outlook Express address book of the infected
system, and send themselves to everyone in the address book, forging the
from: as anyone else in the address book. This isn't new, but the virus
filtering software that many ISPs use doesn't seem to understand this;
worse, some of them will send it with the virus still attached, so you
now have a copy of it when it didn't even come from you in the first
place.

So I get a
blizzard of Emails from servers with messages like "couldn't deliver" or
"there was a virus attached". Now my biggest problem is that mail I want to
get often ends up filtered. What a pain. Can we move Spamming and Virus
creation up to executable offenses?

Friends of mine who are in the Windows world have had good luck with
a program called 'zaep' (www.zaep.com, oddly enough) that does a
challenge/response thing. If someone emails you for the first time,
they get an email autoresponse back saying "Hi, if you're real, one
of us has to tell my email filter that you are and you'll never be
bothered by this again". Forged email, of course, won't ever get
delivered to someone who can validate that address. So, unless the
virus and/or spam come from someone you have already approved, you
won't see any of it. I've been meaning to build one of my systems
back up as a Windows box to try it myself.

As far as making them executable offenses, I'm all for it. Hell, a
couple of vigilante incidents would probably have a marked effect.