Re: [somewhat OT] Hotmail funda

[Suresh Ramasubramanian <mallet@xxxxxxx>]

Diwakar Ranganathan rearranged electrons thusly:

> i was surprised to find that some members in this list
> use the notorious hotmail service. what drives a linux
> enthusiast/user to use hotmail?

convenience?

> thanks to Frederick Noronha for the link.
 
> Hotmail, the free e-mail service from Microsoft, is
> divulging subscribers' e-mail addresses, cities and
> states to a public Internet directory that combines

Hell man ... Hotmail's been doing this at setup time (asks you if you want to
be listed on their web based hotmail members directory) since donkey's years.
Also, you normally do get subscribed to assorted ads from hotmail sponsors -
based on that detailed member profile you fill up when you subscribe.

Any third party, J.Random Spammer trying to harvest such a directory will not
enjoy what happens to him when hotmail's abuse staff and lawyers catch up.

> of receiving junk e-mail, known as spam, because they
> overlook the check box. Once their information makes
> the directory, it is easily obtained by advertisers. 
 
Hell - even posting to LI-* is hazardous that way.  It's not rocket science to
write a bot that crawls through webpages (say the LI archives) and suck out
anything that looks like an email address (even random clumps of ASCII like the
stuff you see at http://combat.uxn.com/great.contacts - generated by a script
called "w poison").

So, if you post using an address anywhere online, expect to start getting
spammed on it.

	-s

-- 
Suresh Ramasubramanian  <-->  mallet <at> efn <dot> org
EMail Sturmbannfuhrer, Lower Middle Class Unix Sysadmin
"What separates normal people from kooks is how they react when people disagree
with them or tell them "NO"  <-- Ron Ritzman on news.admin.net-abuse.email