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For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
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>Hello all,
>I would like to draw your attention to an irritating episode of indecent
>spam of a pornographic nature that I have been subjected to for the past one
>month. I am writing about this to the list because the hotmail ID that I use
>to subscribe to the list is undisclosed elsewhere.
First, I may as well tell you this before Eric does. This is off-topic and should be taken up off-list with Eric. You will note that his address, in the footer of every techwr-l posting, is ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com, not webmaster -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- The techwr-l webmaster is Eric's wife, Deborah.
Second, techwr-l is mirrored on a public listserv, bit.listserv.techwr-l, that is archived by Google Groups. You have no presumption of privacy or confidentiality here, although your anonymity does presumably protect your identity from everyone but Microsoft and the Federal Government. (Your anonymity scores you negative point in my book, by the way. I believe in signing my opinions, standing up and being counted, not cringing in fear of my neighbors. But that's another matter.)
Third, get over it. This is still the Wild West, where freedom of expression takes precedence over pristine sidwalks. We all get spam, with or without a hotmail address, with or without techwr-l. Words and pictures will not hurt you. Just delete messages that you do not wish to open and go on with your day. If you can't handle that, get off the Internet.
Fourth, read your hotmail account agreement. Someone posted the other day that there are some new privacy checkboxes at the bottom of your account profile page. It may be too late for your current hotmail account, but you can open a new one and check the appropriate boxes. I do not have much confidence that this will prevent your getting spam in the future, though, because of the public newsgroup, from which your address can be harvested if you ever use it to post anything here.
Fifth, here's yet another workaround: Post to techwr-l from your hotmail account and set that account to the nomail option. Open a second techwr-l account with an address you never post from, where you can read the traffic. That address will not be harvested from the newsgroup because it will never appear there. Never read your hotmail inbox; just delete en masse. (You'll have to reply to the lyris message when you change your option to nomail, though; don't delete that message before reading it.)
HTH,
Dick
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