META: Policy change? Was: Moderator note: Newsgroup participants under virus attack

"Mike Turco" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I seem to be getting about two or more megabytes worth of this stuff
> every hour, which keeps jamming up my Yahoo account.
> 
> The business groups are not the only newsgroups under attack. It may
> not be an attack against newsgroups,  maybe some of the spammers who
> collect newsgroup addresses have had their computers hit.
> 
> I believe this is the W32/[EMAIL PROTECTED] virus, further information here:
> 
> http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?id=helpCenter&hcName=swen

Well folks, it sure looks like many of the victims of the Swen virus are 
Usenet posters (based on my own anecdotal "evidence"). Mike suggested in a 
private e-mail that we (the moderators) automatically "munge" the e-mail 
addresses of all approved messages. (For a discussion of munging, see for 
example: http://www.mailmsg.com/SPAM_munging.htm )

I can modify the moderation software to do this, but I think it needs some 
discussion and general agreement. Typical problems: it would be easy to 
forget to "de-munge" an address when replying to a poster by direct e-mail. 
Also, if a poster already has a munged address, additional munging may 
sometimes make reconstruction of the original ambiguous. And lastly, this 
is a clear case of closing the proverbial barn door after the horses have 
fled. But, alas, another virus or worm writer will come along at some 
future point to harvest addresses again, so I don't think it will be a 
futile effort.

So what do people think? Shall we automatically munge? If we do, any 
suggestions on preferred methods (keeping in mind the tips provided in the 
munging URL I included)?

Jim Logajan, business group co-moderator