Which offence would that be, Alan? If you do it to impersonate someone
else, then I can see the problem. If you're giving a non-existant email
address to hide your identity, what offence are you committing? Do we
have specific internet laws, or does it fall under some other legislation
(i.e. would you be committing the same offence by posting a letter with
a false return address?)
>Hmmm, most of the spammers do that. Has one been prosecuted?
Unlikely. Most are outside the UK, so trying to prosecute them under
UK laws would prove extremely difficult. Despite various extradition
treaties, we have a hard enough time getting murderers/rapists etc.
that have fled overseas sent to the UK for trial. The chances of it
happening because someone faked their email address is not very high :-)
>I still think the gateway and archives should obscure addresses.
I disagree with this completely. I *want* my email address in the
headers so people can reply to me directly. Not all responses to
my messages are appropriate for the list as a whole. If someone
wants to reply to a point in one of my messages that specifically
affects me and no-one else, why waste bandwith sending it to the
thousands of others around the world that read the list?
>I find spam in my mailbox every day, all of it because this list
>exposes my address on usenet.
Wrong. If that were the case, I would also have a mailbox full of spam,
and I don't. I'm currently subscribed to 10 mailing lists (mostly Linux
oriented on vger), and the last time I was spammed was over 2 years ago.
My guess is that spammers have got your email address from elsewhere,
and you're blaming it on this list because you see it as the most
likely source of the problem.
Tet
-- --==<< ``Reality is for those who can't handle science fiction'' >>==-- --------------------+--------------+---------------------------------------- tethys@ml.com | Micro$oft: | Linux, the choice of a GNU generation. tet@astradyne.co.uk | Just say no! | See http://www.uk.linux.org for details