>Another list owner recently told me that he was avoiding activating the web >archive interface on his lists out of fear that if the interface were >active, professional spammers could use it to "mine" for e-mail addresses, >just as they do to capture addresses on usenet groups. > >I can understand why someone might set review= private or owner to prevent >this kind of trouble, but I have never heard of a problem stemming from the >archives being available. I mean, if someone really wanted the addresses >that badly, they could just subscribe to lots of lists and then capture >posters' addresses >as they came through. > >Is this a legitimate concern? If so, how big a one? Yes, it ius a legitimate concer, but a list-owner can divert such problems, if deemed neccesary, by setting the subscription by owner keyword, * Subscription= By Owner thus any attempt to subscribe to the list would have to go through a person first, and spammers don't really want to deal with people. They just want to spam. As a result, most will not have much oppertunity if you set your list up in this way. As far as the archives, if you set your list to * Send= Private such a limitation will also be placed on the archives of the list. Glenn