Internet > Mailing
Lists >
Mailing List Security
See
the Internet
security section for more information on general Internet security issues.
Specific security issues related to mailing lists are described below. Mailing
lists are public mediums, and provide little assurance of confidentiality:
- Address
confidentiality. Your email address will
be revealed to others if you send
a message to the list.
- Email review. Your address may
even be accessible if you don't send anything to the list, if the list has a
subscriber
review command. See the specific sections on
Listserv, Listproc, and Majordomo for advice on concealing your address from
this command if desired.
- Redistribution. Your opinions may be recorded and redistributed by
others. Although many lists have a policy about not using contributions to
the
list, or only using them under certain conditions, there is no practical way
to enforce these policies, and they are routinely ignored. If you don't want
to put a controversial opinion on the record, then the only sure protection
is to not write it to a mailing list
received by a lot of people you don't know.
- Archiving.
Anything you send to a mailing list may be saved and archived, possibly forever,
and made accessible to others many years later. Your messages may be retrievable
from archives through search commands, or through the web if the list keeps
web archives.
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