Is this true?

macfeller · #1 September 15th, 2004, 10:28 PM

In response to a query about macosx.com on a mac USENET group:

"And they scan the content and build aggregate data to sell to
advertisers."

True?

mf

DanTekGeek · #2 September 15th, 2004, 10:51 PM

im gonna a go out on a limb here and say no

**ScottW** · #3 September 15th, 2004, 10:57 PM

I read this on the Internet, could it be true?

"The world is flat."

symphonix · #4 September 15th, 2004, 11:34 PM

I'd say not true. I've had a macosx.com email address for over two years, and haven't ever had any spam emails at all.

Satcomer · #5 September 16th, 2004, 01:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ScottW

I read this on the Internet, could it be true?

"The world is flat."

Your forgot about "The Flat Earth Society".

**mdnky** · #6 September 16th, 2004, 01:29 AM

About as true as me saying my bank account balance makes Bill Gates' or Uncle Sam's account balances look measly (wish it did though) <G>.

Lycander · #7 September 16th, 2004, 01:37 AM

In the user control panel, by default our email addresses are hidden from public view. There are many other less sophisticated message boards that do not have such features, or the user neglects to hide their email address properly. What happens then is, little script kiddies run a program that requests a webpage from a site - and to the web server it would look the same as if the request came from a web browser - after capturing the HTML, another tool is used to scan the HTML source for email addresses. If your email address was blatantly printed out, even if in a URL, the scanner will pick it up and add it to a database.

Those buggers run these scripts repeatedly and mine a website for email addresses of people who visit that site.

macfeller · #8 September 16th, 2004, 07:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ScottW

I read this on the Internet, could it be true?

"The world is flat."

Now, now. In the very short time I've been here I expected more. More, your lack of specificity might lead one to believe there was some truth to it. Others' comments are reaffirming. Hmmm ... Perhaps that was your intent: Any defense coming you might be considered suspect since it comes from you - let others speak up, which they did. I now wonder if the newsgroup poster wasn't in fact relating a situation stemming from forum use/abuse. Whatever, I have been impressed with the appearance of a great service and the testimonies here and on the other thread. Wonderful.

mf