Well, that would make for one extremely sophisticated piece of software if it were roaming the net finding LISTSERV host sites and joining lists just so it can scan the archives, on its own without some human guiding the process.  And in such case, it would of course leave a trail - the record of having subscribed.

What I was really thinking about was more basic, technologically - in other words, would some automated scan/search tool be able to access the notebook content without specifically managing to make itself a subscriber to the list? Like strangely constructed URLs or odd parameters thrown at WA in peculiar ways?

>>> [log in to unmask] 07/09/01 01:59PM >>>
>I am very interested in further comments on how a bot might gain
>access to the content of a private notebook, since you are not fully
>confident that this designation will keep them entirely out.

If the bot subscribed to the mailing list before accessing the
archives that would bypass the Notebook= ...Private safeguard.
Presumably Subscription=Open,Confirm (or more stringent settings)
would prevent that from being a problem, but I don't want to make any
guarantees.

Thanks,
--
Jacob Haller, Technical Support
L-Soft international, Inc
http://www.lsoft.com/