[AquaticLife] Question For Our Moderator’s?
To me, it depends on the type of group. Some groups like to keep their Members info private but it doesn’t really stop email harvesting unless all of the messages are also blocked from public viewing… meaning people would have to join the group to even lurk and read info. Since the messages in this group are not blocked from public viewing, each time a member posts a message, their Yahoo ID is included and oftentimes, the bulk of or all of their email address is also listed. For those of us who get the posts via email, we also get each email address used by the member so an email harvester could get the email addresses anyhow.
By moderating new members so they have to now include a “live” comment as to why they want to join the group, it’s much harder for spam-bots to join the group (but they still try). The bigger concern affecting many Yahoo Groups is the relatively new Grouply thing, where some members are inadvertently giving Grouply access to their own Yahoo Group accounts, including giving Grouply their Yahoo ID’s and passwords, so then Grouply is able to harvest all of the other members to send out their invites. When Grouply was first formed, people HAD to give Grouply access to their Yahoo accounts and passwords but now Grouply has backed off from that rule so it’s only optional but still has their default joining page set up where uninformed people might still give Grouply their Yahoo ID’s and passwords.
There are so many ways for spammers to get people’s email addresses, trying to use Yahoo’s limited security features to block email harvesting is mostly futile so other than making it harder for spam-bots to join the groups, the blocking of member lists is mostly not needed…. at least not blocking the member lists from actual members. If there are no spam-bots in a group, then there is no major concern to stop other members from being able to locate a fellow member for the purposes of sending a private message, etc.
Lenny Vasbinder Fish Blog - http://GoldLenny.blogspot.com (Links to articles referenced above listed on the right side under Archives - Year, Month and under Labels)
Category: Philippines Internet Koi Society
