Posted by Stut on 01/13/06 18:32

Mark wrote:

>Gabor Hojtsy wrote:
>
>
>>Dear Pop Mihai Sergiu,
>>
>>By sending this email you (again) posted to a public mailing list which
>>is archived at multiple places, of which really few are under our
>>control. There would be no point in removing your message from our
>>archives, as it is also posted to an unknown number of other archives
>>around the internet.
>>
>>Also there is no point in attaching a signature below your message which
>>prohibits the review of the contents, as the signature is only read
>>after the message is alread read.
>>
>>
>It should also be noted that simply saying something is "confidential" is
>not enough. The sender has to exercise a level of care to prevent "private
>and confidential" information and communications from becoming public.
>Obviously posting any such information to a fundamentally public forum
>negates any such expectations. It is like screaming, at the top of your
>lungs, in a public venue, a secret. You would not have any reasonable
>expectation of privacy even if you screamed "don't tell anyone."
>
>

Nice analogy.

>However, his rant does present a real issue. Forcing people to use "real"
>email addresses exposes them to SPAM and abuse. I would suggest, if
>possible and resources permit, that some sort of aliasing/registration
>system be deployed where every post is may by "anonABCDEFGH@php.net" and
>every "ABCDEFGH" is a registered user who's email address is known.
>
>

I would have to disagree with this. I've been on lots of 'public'
mailing lists for quite a while and this is the first time I've ever
seen a complaint of this nature. I really think the OP should have taken
more care to read the mailing lists page on php.net before signing up.
It clearly states that there are archives and that they are searchable.
If privacy was a concern then these archives should have been checked to
make sure they obscure email addresses.

If there is any issue I think it's that the above mentioned web page
does not make it clear that there are lots of archives in addition to
those mentioned that php.net does not control. At any rate I don't see
any need for php.net to implement a system for anonymising posts - that
would be a huge waste of resources as a result of a single complaint out
of what is probably many thousands of list members.

Hmm, must be Friday!

-Stut

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