"What's in a name?" I've kept quiet for as long as I can on
this puppy, so here goes:
> Given a starting URL (an HTTP address), it will search that site for
> any hyperlinks, and follow them, from there to anywhere. Along the
> way, it'll find Email addresses embedded within HTML pages.
> In effect, ActiveAgent crawls from site-to-site, locating and
> pushing people's "mail-ME" buttons.
You're pushing MY buttons, too. Here's why:
I've just completed (I hope) a week in hell for doing exactly this.
In fact, I had carefully pre-qualified each page for relevance before
extracting mailto's, and sent only a very short, highly relevant,
informative message.
What I found out was that geo.lister@pasteur.com is NOT necessarily
Dr. George Lister, but is maybe an unmoderated list server for
geographers, geologists, or geomancers. They don't like hearing
from you and I have 5 MB of email to prove it. And there were
many other problems like this. I even ended up getting MYSELF
subscribed to a bunch of lists for chicken pluckers and so forth.
> ActiveAgent does NOT skim newsgroups, databases, and/or subscriber
> lists. It locates addresses on published, accessible WWWeb-pages,
> and sends only a single message to each recipient. ActiveAgent will
> contact those people who have invited this comment by displaying their
> Email coordinates in a "please-mail-to-me" context (i.e. a MAILTO
> button on a public page).
Yeah, but the text next to the mailto might have said, "Please
mail me if the sky is falling, and NOT for any other reason:
mailto:chicken.little@owl.com." She's doesn't want to hear about
the stock market falling, etc. She didn't "invite this comment"
at all. A spam is a spam is a spam.
Don't be surprised if a few email-bombs are part of your /var
partition soon after good ol' Active Agent perpetrates his crimes.
It happened to us. I also learned a few good email-bomb multiplication
tricks which I sure won't mention here.
Then, of course, you'll also be hearing from every crazy, fanatic,
garrulous, etc. person in the known universe. Right now, I'm looking
for an unlisted email address, maybe on Pluto or somewhere slightly
more remote.
Robert: You ought to stick to the fractal, talismanic, numerological
psychedelia, and drown this sucker in the bit bucket forthwith.
Or at least, do a litttle reading in the x.y.net-abuse newsgroups.
Or you may be finding out what the UDP is. IMHO, of course.