[CRS_META] Privacy of archives

[Tim C.]

For as long as I remember, the access password has been
available to all:

http://lists.milepost1.com/cgi-bin/wa?A1=ind0611&L=crsociety

And when the provided password wasn't working, kind people
have always been willing to lend some password help:

http://cr.timtyler.org/search/index.php

And I could, but won't, link to where old archives are currently
available without a password (an accidental discovery made today).

The best "password protection" the archives ever had was
worse than even a simple captcha:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha

And there is no expectation of security on the computers/users
who get the list email.

If I had to rate list privacy from 1 to 10, it would be like
this:

	10 don't post
	4 no archives, just email (to 1600+ close friends)
	3 paid archive access only (still hundreds of friends)
	2 captcha-protected access
	1.5 the old "guest" access protection
	1 full archive access

We have been between 1 and 1.5 on an arbitrary scale of 10.

Improvements could be made on communicating the realities of
posting on the internet.  It could be worse:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#Privacy_concerns

I would trust the free-for-all of Google over Facebook because
there is a chance your Google info won't be harvested (as
opposed to the guarantee that it will be on Facebook).

-Tim C.