Including Email Address in the Reply in Mailing-list

Including Email Address in the Reply in Mailing-list

[Husain Alshehhi]

Hello all,

I just noticed that some of us here, when replying, include the email of
the sender of the previous email in the response as part of body of the
email. This email address shows up in plain text in the mailing
list[1]. This is certainly done without any ill-intentions, but that
could cause the email address to receive quite a bit of spam if spammers
crawl these pages.

I suggest refraining from doing so, and instead use the name. Please let
me know what you think.

[1] this is an example: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2021-04/msg00042.html

--
Husain Alshehhi

Re: Including Email Address in the Reply in Mailing-list

[autofrettage]

> I just noticed that some of us here, when replying, include the email of
> the sender of the previous email in the response as part of body of the
> email.
/.../
> I suggest refraining from doing so, and instead use the name.

Good idea!

Cheers
Rasmus

Re: Including Email Address in the Reply in Mailing-list

[Tim Cross]

I have no issue with this suggestion and am happy to try and comply.

The challenge for many will be that they either

- need to remember to remove the email details manually (line/header
automatically added by mail client) while sorting out either

- how to modify mail client for all replies (may not be appropriate for
non-ML replies), or

- how to modify mail client for just ML replies

My personal belief is that if you subscribe to a public mail list, you
need to accept that your email address will be 'out there' - more
generally, over time, your email address is going to be harvested
regardless and your better off trying to improve filtering and spam
detection than any attempt to minimise the address appearing in archived
content on-line.

Off now to try and work out how to change the reply header in my mail
clients!

Husain Alshehhi 

> Hello all,
>
> I just noticed that some of us here, when replying, include the email of
> the sender of the previous email in the response as part of body of the
> email. This email address shows up in plain text in the mailing
> list[1]. This is certainly done without any ill-intentions, but that
> could cause the email address to receive quite a bit of spam if spammers
> crawl these pages.
>
> I suggest refraining from doing so, and instead use the name. Please let
> me know what you think.
>
> [1] this is an example: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2021-04/msg00042.html


-- 
Tim Cross

Re: Including Email Address in the Reply in Mailing-list

[Jean Louis]

* Husain Alshehhi <husain@alshehhi.io> [2021-04-02 18:58]:
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> I just noticed that some of us here, when replying, include the email of
> the sender of the previous email in the response as part of body of the
> email. This email address shows up in plain text in the mailing
> list[1]. This is certainly done without any ill-intentions, but that
> could cause the email address to receive quite a bit of spam if spammers
> crawl these pages.
> 
> I suggest refraining from doing so, and instead use the name. Please let
> me know what you think.

I don't think it is a problem that you can solve by directing people
on what is to be done. It will work with few people, but is always
error prone. People read mailing list with various email clients,
correcting the email or removing it by directing people who reply is
simple not feasible. As you see, mailing list is pretty spam free, so
either moderators do the work, or spam filters do the work. You can do
the same with your domain, Protonmail is hosting it for you, and maybe
they have spam filter or similar, there is server side check against
spammer IP database and various other techniques. Spam that
fraudulently originates from your domain would be, in my opinion,
detected by Protonmail and placed in Spam folder due to ~all in the
SPF record.

alshehhi.io.		299	IN	TXT	"v=spf1 include:_spf.protonmail.ch mx ~all"


-- 
Jean

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Re: Including Email Address in the Reply in Mailing-list

[Jean Louis]

* Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com> [2021-04-03 02:35]:
> My personal belief is that if you subscribe to a public mail list, you
> need to accept that your email address will be 'out there' - more
> generally, over time, your email address is going to be harvested
> regardless and your better off trying to improve filtering and spam
> detection than any attempt to minimise the address appearing in archived
> content on-line.
> 
> Off now to try and work out how to change the reply header in my mail
> clients!

I am using this one, but not because of spam, rather when I have to
forward email and don't want to disclose email addresses of related
parties.

(defun remove-emails ()
  "Removes all <example@example.com> emails from buffer. At some
occasions user may want to forward email messages from other
people without revealing their email addresses. mutt email client
usually displayes email addresses in this format
<USER@EXAMPLE.COM> and all such addresses may be easily removed
with this command."
  (interactive)
  (save-excursion
    (goto-char (point-min))
    (let ((match (re-search-forward "<.*@.*>")))
      (replace-match ""))))



-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

Sign an open letter in support of Richard M. Stallman
https://rms-support-letter.github.io/

Re: Including Email Address in the Reply in Mailing-list

[Juan Manuel Macías]

Tim Cross writes:

> I have no issue with this suggestion and am happy to try and comply.
>
> The challenge for many will be that they either
>
> - need to remember to remove the email details manually (line/header
> automatically added by mail client) while sorting out either
>
> - how to modify mail client for all replies (may not be appropriate for
> non-ML replies), or
>
> - how to modify mail client for just ML replies

> [...]

For Gnus users, one possibility might be:

(defun my-gnus-reply-ml ()
    (interactive)
    (let*
	((message-citation-line-format "%N writes:\n")
	 (message-citation-line-function 'message-insert-formatted-citation-line))
      (gnus-article-reply-with-original)))

 ...And then assign any free key to gnus-article-mode-map

Best regards,

Juan Manuel 

Re: Including Email Address in the Reply in Mailing-list

[Daniele Nicolodi]

On 02/04/2021 17:54, Husain Alshehhi wrote:
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> I just noticed that some of us here, when replying, include the email of
> the sender of the previous email in the response as part of body of the
> email. This email address shows up in plain text in the mailing
> list[1]. This is certainly done without any ill-intentions, but that
> could cause the email address to receive quite a bit of spam if spammers
> crawl these pages.
> 
> I suggest refraining from doing so, and instead use the name. Please let
> me know what you think.

The mailing list is archived here https://orgmode.org/list/ including
the sender email address of all messages. Removing the mail address from
quote headers in the replies is useless to the goal of hiding the email
address of the original message senders from web crawlers.

As expressed by others, you need to accept that writing to a public
mailing list requires public disclosure of the source email address.

It is also about 20 years that avoiding publishing someone email address
on the web is not at all an effective measure in avoiding having such
email address targeted by spam.

Cheers,
Dan