Concern Regarding Public Accessibility of NCSG Mailing List Archives

[Rafik Dammak]

Dear Aaron,

Thanks for your email.
Some clarification to your questions:
- the mailing list is public and open as part of transparency within ICANN
and if I am not mistaken as part of GNSO Operating procedures, you can find
that GNSO council list, PDP working group mailing lists are publicly
archived and can be even subscribed by observers. You can check here a
list of ICANN mailing lists and you can find their archives
https://lists.icann.org/postorius/lists/ and
https://lists.icann.org/hyperkitty/ . Openness by default and private
mailing lists are the exception and need a good reason for that.
- NCSG and NCUC before its mailing list in Syracuse university for
historical reasons. Currently, NCSC EC is investigating the option to move
the mailing lists to another host as a sustainable solution and checking
better alternatives. That will happen in the coming months as we have taken
into consideration factors for migration such as archives etc. We are
working on that partly to fix the issue of spam faced by some members. In
the meantime, I would like to ask kindly those like me using gmail email to
report as non-spam any NCSG list email as it might improve things
temporarily.
- with regard to personal information, I think you are talking about info
in the personal signatures. It is not something we control and I would
advise people to not have signatures with phone numbers etc in emails sent
to any mailing list if possible, public or private. I am not sure if
technically we can hide or redact those info but it might be investigated
in the settings.

I hope that answers your questions.

Best,

Rafik



Le lun. 11 août 2025 à 17:49, Aaron Promise Mbah <theaaronpromise at gmail.com>
a écrit :

> Dear NCSG Leadership and all,
>
> While searching for some information about myself online, I came across a
> webpage containing archives of the NCSG mailing list:
> https://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=NCSG
> DISCUSS;bf9a08f3.2011&FT=&P=T&H=N&S=
> <https://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=NCSG-DISCUSS;bf9a08f3.2011&FT=&P=T&H=N&S=>
>
> So I am guessing that the mails are archived with "Syracuse University".
>
> But I was surprised and a bit uncomfortable to find that the mailing list
> communications, including personal details such as names, phone numbers,
> and email addresses, are publicly accessible. In my case, my phone number
> and email- which I do not usually share openly - are visible. mail Archives
> of other groups like At-Large are stored within ICANN Wikki and not
> accessible publicly.
>
> I have previously had situations where old contact information found
> online was misused after being scraped from platforms like LinkedIn. I am
> concerned that this mailing list archive could also be a source for such
> data harvesting, especially since it contains the contact information of
> many members.
>
> Could you please confirm if this level of public accessibility is
> intentional and compliant with NCSG’s privacy practices? If not, might it
> be possible to restrict access?
>
> I believe this is an important privacy issue that may affect all members
> whose signatures or contact information are included in past emails.
>
> I am also open to understanding what exactly is the case if I have missed
> something.
>
> Thank you for your attention to this matter.
> Regards
>
> Aaron Promise Mbah
> Technology Policy & Innovation Strategist
>
>
>
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