[conspire] (forw) Re: Installing packages in Debian

[Tony Godshall]

On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 10:33 AM, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
> The 'do stuff for me because I'm hiding from spammers' people really do
> need to die in a fire.
...

>> Could you please remove all of your replies in this very old thread<https://groups.google.com/d/topic/comp.os.linux.misc/dnuyKj2vBvI/discussion>?
>> My e-mail address is in it.
>
> You seem to be asking me to remove Usenet posting from Google's archive
> of the Usenet comp.os.linux.misc newsgroup.  I am unable to accomplish
> this request for two reasons:
>
> 1.  I am not Google, Inc., hence have no ability to excise the contents
> of the Google Groups archives.
>
> 2.  Even if I were able to do that, Usenet archives such as
> comp.os.linux.misc are decentralised and mirrored all over the world as
> part of the inherent nature of Usenet.  So, that full article is already
> pretty much everywhere Usenet is archived, which is very many places.
>
> Yes, spam-harvesters do plow through Usenet netnews repositories, not
> just via Google Groups and other HTTP mechanisms.  Some do it via NNTP,
> for example.
>
>
> Separate from that, do you know at least one other person who uses
> the Microsoft Windows operating system?  If so, then the strategy of
> hiding your e-mail address so spammers cannot find it fails
> statistically within one or two month, because of Windows malware that
> scrapes e-mail addresses from infected Windows machines' address books
> and caches, and mass-conveys them to the brokers who compile massive
> sets of addresses to sell them to spammers.
>
> Also, in general, no I would not be willing to retroactively delete all
> of my postings to an online thread for the benerfit of a stranger.  I
> write online contributions for a reason, and typically put quite a bit
> of effort into doing so.  Mass-deleting the fruit of my effort would
> defeat the purposes of all of that work.
...

Not to mention that once even one spammer has a copy of your email
address, no amount of removing of it from public archives will remove
it from the lists spammers trade amongst each other.

###