Re: PHP.net advertised my email address to spammers

Hi Rich! I guess you submitted a bug report at bugs.php.net, though you not write this explicitly. As you can see we require an email address for bug reports for users to be able to track how the bug is solved. You can provide a non-existent email address if you want but then we are not going to be able to contact you. As you can see the user's email addresses are mangled, but God knows what the email address collection software do and know. See http://bugs.php.net/17922. What else can we do? Users are encouraged to search for bugs before they submit a report. They should see how the bug system handles their data [publicly] while they do that search... [Please use reply all, and note that all your messages sent to use are archived at least on one public news server - news.php.net] Goba

As a security measure against spamming, I always use a unique email address whenever I "register" with a website, whether it be for the purpose of posting to a bulletin board, or reporting bugs. The address I used in this instance was "php <AT> richardarmstrong DOT co DOT uk" Between 2003-06-06 and this morning, I have been offered 9 different methods of enlarging parts of my anatomy, reducing debts I wasn't aware of, and cheating the TV companies. All these emails were sent to the unique address, which I used to register on your website. I can't tell whether this is due to hacking or just incompetence. I realise it is too late for you to fix this, and that I will just have to redirect this address to /dev/null, however I do expect you to warn potential users of your system that email addresses, given in confidence on your website in order to report errors in PHP, are not kept private. Yours unhappily,