email address anti spam measure inconsistent

[David Beaumont]

When you enter an email address in normal format nabble nicely hides it automatically. However when you then quote the same post Nabble re-instates it and the quote shows the full email address.  

This seems to be a bug?

David  

[GregChapman]

David Beaumont wrote

This seems to be a bug?

Not really! The true email address of the poster remains hidden.

The address you see is an entirely artificial one created internally within the Nabble system. If you subscribe to the forum via email you'll see a similar artificial address that allows you to contact the original poster.

But neither of these reveals their true email address and, as I understand it, these addresses, like other email addresses generated by the Nabble system are cross-referenced to your Nabble username, hence personal to you, and cannot be passed to a third party for their use.

[David Beaumont]

Thanks Greg but I think you’ve misunderstood my point.  Have a look at http://dba-the-barge-association.222578.n4.nabble.com/Tell-us-your-opinion-we-need-to-know-td3318480.html# in particular:

 

“For any reading this on the forum like me you will see the email addresses are hidden, this is the normal anti spamming measure our forum provider takes - all email addresses in normal email format are hidden.  I've bypassed this (I hope) by giving the addresses in a text format - the email addresses to send your responses to are julian.tether at barges.org and copy in bob.marsland at barges.org

David

Bob Marsland wrote:

Hello All,

A few days ago Julian, who is the Board Director responsible for the lists/forums, asked all subscribers to this list to give their views on the continuation, or otherwise, of this list, as we know it.  Only fifteen out of 300 have replied so far, so I am writing to you all, personally, to entreat you to write with your opinion.

Let me put it plainly.  The decision we are being asked to make is which of these we want:

"A":     A Navigation List which is JUST for the immediate, short, messages from cruising members on subjects which affect barge movements, stoppages, moorings etc ONLY.   And all other discussion, be it regulations, threatened canals, equipment requirements etc., all pertaining to mainland European waterways, moved onto the Main list.

or

"B"    A Navigation List as it has been since it's inception, covering mainland European waterways matters for any and all DBA members to take part in. But without the lengthy and lyrical postings which seem to have precipitated this poll.  

PLEASE make your choice, "A" or " B", and give a narrative reply also if you wish.  SEND to: [hidden email] with a copy to me at: [hidden email].

“

 

Note that the Nabble blanked out email addresses have been restored in the quite above, highlighted in yellow above

 

David

 

 

From: GregChapman [via Nabble Support] [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: 27 February 2011 01:09
To: David Beaumont
Subject: Re: email address anti spam measure inconsistent

 

David Beaumont wrote:

This seems to be a bug?

Not really! The true email address of the poster remains hidden.

The address you see is an entirely artificial one created internally within the Nabble system. If you subscribe to the forum via email you'll see a similar artificial address that allows you to contact the original poster.

But neither of these reveals their true email address and, as I understand it, these addresses, like other email addresses generated by the Nabble system are cross-referenced to your Nabble username, hence personal to you, and cannot be passed to a third party for their use.

Just a Volunteer Nabble Helper - because the nice folk at Nabble have helped me!

 

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[GregChapman]

David Beaumont wrote

Thanks Greg but I think you've misunderstood my point.

I may have done! I often misread things too! :-(

  Have a look at http://dba-the-barge-association.222578.n4.nabble.com/Tell-us-your-opinion-we-need-to-know-td3318480.html# in particular:

I have and every single email address in that thread is hidden - other than the deliberately entered text versions. (Is that because I am not subscribed to the list or not an administrator - I don't know - but they are all hidden to me!)

We both seem agreed that web-based forums do traditionally hide email addresses and Nabble successfully does this. Just look at your post on the forum!

Where I think you see a problem is because you are running a mail list. As far as I am aware Nabble follows mail list conventions for that too.

Unlike a web page, which is open to view by all and is easily be crawled by bots harvesting mail addresses a mail list by its nature is "closed". You take an active decision both to subscribe and, should you post to the list, to reveal your address to other subscribers. (It's the nature of email that the address of the person sending an email is revealed.) A further assumption in mail list software is that subscribers share values and that they will use any information shared with them responsibly. Accordingly it is normal for mail list software NOT to attempt to obscure email addresses or other content included in the bodies of messages. Nabble is not alone in this. Mail lists run through YahooGroups and Googe Groups, for example, perform in exactly the same way. Revealing both senders email addresses and sending message bodies without obscuring content.

Note that the Nabble blanked out email addresses have been restored in the quite above, highlighted in yellow above

Not by the time they hit the forum! I simply see [hidden email] highlighted in yellow.

[David Beaumont]

Thanks I’m not expressing this well. It’s not related to our email account.  The problem is that email addresses are blanked except when you reply to a post with the blanked out email addresses in AND quote that email you are replying to.  This then reveals the email addresses AND it puts them into your post, which is then accepted,  with the email addresses un blanked in the quotation.  So 2 problems – a) anyone can find out the email addresses by starting a reply and quoting the email and b) if anyone does reply with a quote then the email addresses that were blanked out magically re-appear unblanked.

 

 To see the problem you need to go to http://dba-the-barge-association.222578.n4.nabble.com/Tell-us-your-opinion-we-need-to-know-td3318480.html, scroll down to the second post and then click [show rest of quote], that will then show you the following (note email addresses restored)

 

Bob Marsland wrote:

Hello All,

A few days ago Julian, who is the Board Director responsible for the lists/forums, asked all subscribers to this list to give their views on the continuation, or otherwise, of this list, as we know it.  Only fifteen out of 300 have replied so far, so I am writing to you all, personally, to entreat you to write with your opinion.

Let me put it plainly.  The decision we are being asked to make is which of these we want:

"A":     A Navigation List which is JUST for the immediate, short, messages from cruising members on subjects which affect barge movements, stoppages, moorings etc ONLY.   And all other discussion, be it regulations, threatened canals, equipment requirements etc., all pertaining to mainland European waterways, moved onto the Main list.

or

"B"    A Navigation List as it has been since it's inception, covering mainland European waterways matters for any and all DBA members to take part in. But without the lengthy and lyrical postings which seem to have precipitated this poll.  

PLEASE make your choice, "A" or " B", and give a narrative reply also if you wish.  SEND to: [hidden email] with a copy to me at: [hidden email].

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not send to the list.  Remember those downloading on their mobiles.

It occurred to me that maybe it is just me that it is showing the email addresses to so I logged out and re-viewed the posts as a non member, the addresses  are still there (in the quote of the second message, not in the original).

 

Best wishes

David

 

From: GregChapman [via Nabble Support] [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: 27 February 2011 18:00
To: David Beaumont
Subject: RE: email address anti spam measure inconsistent

 

David Beaumont wrote:

Thanks Greg but I think you've misunderstood my point.

I may have done! I often misread things too! :-(

  Have a look at http://dba-the-barge-association.222578.n4.nabble.com/Tell-us-your-opinion-we-need-to-know-td3318480.html# in particular:

I have and every single email address in that thread is hidden - other than your deliberately entered text versions. (Is that because I am not subscribed to the list or not an administrator - I don't know - but they are all hidden to me!)

We both seem agreed that web-based forums do traditionally hide email addresses and Nabble successfully does this. Just look at your post on the forum!

Where I think you see a problem is because you are running a mail list. As far as I am aware Nabble follows mail list conventions for that too.

Unlike a web page, which is open to view by all and is easily be crawled by bots harvesting mail addresses a mail list by its nature is "closed". You take an active decision both to subscribe and, should you post to the list, to reveal your address to other subscribers. (It's the nature of email that the address of the person sending an email is revealed.) A further assumption in mail list software is that subscribers share values and that they will use any information shared with them responsibly. Accordingly it is normal for mail list software NOT to attempt to obscure email addresses or other content included in the bodies of messages. Nabble is not alone in this. Mail lists run through YahooGroups and Googe Groups, for example, perform in exactly the same way. Revealing both senders email addresses and sending message bodies without obscuring content.

Note that the Nabble blanked out email addresses have been restored in the quite above, highlighted in yellow above

Not by the time they hit the forum! I simply see [hidden email] highlighted in yellow.

Just a Volunteer Nabble Helper - because the nice folk at Nabble have helped me!

 

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[GregChapman]

David Beaumont wrote

The problem is that email addresses are blanked except when you reply to a post with the blanked out email addresses in AND quote that email you are replying to.

Now I get it! You're right!

For the time being the solution appears to be to oblige your users to post in plain text or to post only directly at the forum site. Take a look at "liam scott-3"'s post and you see that his plain text reply does successfully hide the email addresses within quotes.

The trouble appears to be that in HTML posts quoted text gets hidden within <blockquote> tags and it seems that the [hidden email] conversion routine has been told to skip the content of those tags.

This does appear to be a bug that ought to be fixed.

Rant follows (You may ignore!):
Top-posting is a horrible habit that causes huge problems on a forum when it becomes even less necessary than it is in the mail environment! (Your own posts contain enormous clutter because you have not removed the unnecessary quote beneath your response) Top-posting is hideous on mail lists too! It multiplies bandwidth usage utterly unnecessarily! Mind you even Liam isn't a good example of plain text posting. He seems to have caught bad habits from the HTML posters and has left much worthless clutter in his posts too! Sorry! I'm giving away my plain text email prejudices!

[David Beaumont]

Glad you see it now. 

 

I have my Outlook set up to default to plain text, it only goes into html when replying to an html mail – like yours!

 

Sorry I love ‘top posting’, its only 1 byte a character (in plain text) and it means I can see all the previous correspondence without having to go look through my inbox.  I can see why forums don’t like it, you need some software to strip it out.  You could make a fortune.

 

Best wishes

David

 

From: GregChapman [via Nabble Support] [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: 01 March 2011 00:47
To: David Beaumont
Subject: RE: email address anti spam measure inconsistent

 

David Beaumont wrote:

The problem is that email addresses are blanked except when you reply to a post with the blanked out email addresses in AND quote that email you are replying to.

Now I get it! You're right!

For the time being the solution appears to be to oblige your users to post in plain text or to post only directly at the forum site. Take a look at "liam scott-3"'s post and you see that his plain text reply does successfully hide the email addresses within quotes.

The trouble appears to be that in HTML posts quoted text gets hidden within <blockquote> tags and it seems that the [hidden email] conversion routine has been told to skip the content of those tags.

This does appear to be a bug that ought to be fixed.

Rant follows (You may ignore!):
Top-posting is a horrible habit that causes huge problems on a forum when it becomes even less necessary than it is in the mail environment! (Your own posts contain enormous clutter because you have not removed the unnecessary quote beneath your response) Top-posting is hideous on mail lists too! It multiplies bandwidth usage utterly unnecessarily! Mind you even Liam isn't a good example of plain text posting. He seems to have caught bad habits from the HTML posters and has left much worthless clutter in his posts too! Sorry! I'm giving away my plain text email prejudices!

Just a Volunteer Nabble Helper - because the nice folk at Nabble have helped me!

 

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[GregChapman]

David Beaumont wrote

I have my Outlook set up to default to plain text, it only goes into html when replying to an html mail - like yours!

You can, of course, set Outlook ALWAYS to send in plain text and not use "Reply in format of sender" option. I take the view that HTML mail should only be used between consenting adults. I don't consent. I did complain to Nabble once about the fact that they add an HTML part to their mail, but they responded that removing the HTML part wasn't a priority for them.

Sorry I love 'top posting', its only 1 byte a character (in plain text) and it means I can see all
the previous correspondence without having to go look through my inbox.

But that's what your mail client has a "thread mode" for, to put all your mail together so it's easy to find, but I recall, from the last time I use Outlook (almost ten years ago) that Outlook is very broken in the way it handles threading and equally broken in the way it handles quotes, There was an add-on called "Quote-fix" that some third party offered as a freebie.

But I'm straying well off Nabble support issues, time to go "off-list"!

Let's hope Hugo comes along and notes the bug.

[Hugo <Nabble>]

Yes, this is a bug and we will fix it asap. Thanks for reporting it.

[Hugo <Nabble>]

Hi David, we need one or two weeks to fix this bug. Maybe you can edit that post for now and remove the exposed email manually. I will let you know when this is fixed. Sorry for the inconveniece.