7 march 1995 Ottawa
 
About all I can think of to keep people from being seen as a subscriber
to a particularly sensitive list, like say brain tumour etc is for each
subscriber to be marked as a concealed subscriber.  I suppose the nosey
could just collect their mail from the list and look at who posted it
and assume peole posting to a list who are not known to be researchers
or md's may have an interest in the subject.
 
Lists dealing with alcoholism and survivors of childhood abuse are also
possible sources of problems.
 
Short of making the subscription to the list by invitation only e.g.
closed, by owner and marking the entirre list as confidential, I don't
know a way of cutting down on entrepreneurs from cashing in on mailing
ads to selected net addresses compiled from lists or by looking at say
usenet newsgroup postings.
 
It is a risk and so far, I don't think too many people have tried to
send electronic junk mail.
 
I heard of one person in Vancouver who somehow had their name get on a
mailing list and they get dozens of solicitations by normal postal mail
from U.S. Charities and funeral companies which really bothered them.
 
My normal way to deal with unwanted postal solicitations is to complete
the business reply card or envelope enclosed in the mailing and to
attach thereto a large, used, brick or piece of clean sidewalk from a
road repair site.
 
The dear solicitor (charity) then gets stuck with paying return postage
on the brick and business reply card and generally gets the hint very
quickly to delete your name from the list.
 
With my luck, I would find that if I did this very much, I wound up on a
junk mail list of firms who sell construction machinery or supplies.
 
Rather than clog the Internet with the electronic equivalent of a chunk
of sidewalk, sent to an electronic junk mailer along with a protest note
sent to the person's postmaster, Ithink sending the person's postmaster
or system manager a polite letter explaining why the mail is offensive
is best.  if after repeated offenses, the site doesn't take any action,
then i guess we look for broken electronic sidewalks to send to the
offender.
 
There is no simple answer to either the issue of network security or
junk mail unless we all have our incoming mail pre-processed to un-pgp
encrypt the mail and return the trash whence it came with an automated
rresponse it is mail non gratta.