Sorry about the OT, but it seems to me that this group should be brought up to date.
Google groups has a "show profile" feature which appears to pattern match the email in the "from" field and ascribe all posts to usenet to that user.
I saw a probably guiltless fellow publicly slandered this morning, in alt.os.linux.suse, based on this info. So people are clearly going to believe what they see there.
Anyone using a generic mail like snipped-for-privacy@address.com (mine) is at risk. (I assure you I post only to a handful of newsgroups, and none of the "darker" ones on the list google associates me with.)
I have verified that at least several of our group are implicated by this issue. I suggest that we all complain to google, and as such have included the text of my mail to them below.
Thanks for your time and sorry about the distraction.
-E
*** google mail ***Dear Sirs,
It has recently come to my attention that your google groups interface includes a "show profile" feature that performs a simple pattern matching search through the news archive looking for matching return addresses, and then lists all those groups with matches.
You may not be aware that most experienced usenet users were forced to adopt some form of address hiding in order to prevent being flooded by spam robots. Some of adopted fairly generic returns of the form " snipped-for-privacy@noone.org", leaving our true addresses in the sig for whoever wished to reach us.
I today witnessed the public slander of some probably guiltless user of such a return address. Most users are not sophisticated enough to discern that the posters are not the same from the headers, so you are actively participating in the slander, which is at best morally wrong and at worst illegal in many countries.
Some examples. I have long posted a return of snipped-for-privacy@address.com. Your profile of me shows that my varied interests include alt.support.personality, alt.hackers.malicious, alt.abuse.recovery and alt.sex.escorts.ads. Needless to say I have posted in none of these groups, in fact careful examination will show that my posts are restricted to a handful of groups.
I proceeded to lookup a couple of people well known to me, having witnessed the humiliation of the poster on alt.os.linux.suse this morning.
A well known journalist posts with a return of snipped-for-privacy@privacy.net. According to you he spends every second glued to usenet, with 922,624 posts of various interests including alt.atheism, alt.christnet.christian-life, talk.rape and alt.support.girl-lovers.
You show another of good reputation frequenting such varied centers as alt.feminism, alt.sport.pro-wrestling, talk.rape and ukonline.teens.
Clearly your profiling system is vastly flawed and must be changed. I look forward to receiving your favorable reply.
sincerely,
-Emery Davis