Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 12:01:24 -0400
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Phone Numbers
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

At 09:23 AM 5/3/05 -0400, Steve Smith wrote:
>Keith F. Lynch wrote:

>Mike, anybody who wants your unlisted phone number has it.  Last time I
>checked, all it took was $20 to the right phone company employee or a
>bit of social engineering.

Everyone who wants it doesn't have it.  Many mass marketers would love to
have it in their databases, but don't.  Paying $20 to a crooked phone
company employee isn't cost effective for that purpose...but doing a web
search is.

I'm glad to hear that they haven't started doing that yet...at least as of
the late 90's when you ran your "test".  I know for a fact that they do
search web pages for email addresses though, so it's good that Keith didn't
include that information in the Journals unless asked to do so (opt-in).
The company I work for has an anti-SPAM product, and the developer
intentionally listed some target addresses on web pages to get them picked
up by SPAMmers, so they would send him SPAM that he could analyze and put
defenses against into our product.  He gets hundreds of SPAMs a day as a
result.

-- Mike B.
--
A feature is a bug with seniority.