**Can the archive be disabled or protected?**

The archiving of a list can't be disabled.  Please read about our mission and purpose and try to understand that your archives are important to the community.  They aren't a privacy risk -- we obfuscate all email addresses to circumvent the SPAMmer-crawling-the-site problem.

If you feel that the information your subscribers post on the list shouldn't be publicly available in the archives, please consider the following:

  * Email isn't by itself a secure medium.  Should you be using email at all for these things?
  * Anonymity can certainly be important, but this has nothing to do with archived emails.  
  * If you wish to keep information private, perhaps FreeLists isn't the best fit for your group?

That said, a password can be set on any list archive via the Portal Administrator on the Login page.  Consider the following:

  * Once one is set, it can't be removed without intervention from a FreeLists Staff member.
  * To discourage the use of archive passwords, your support options with us will be limited.
  * **Your list will be something of a second-class citizen.**  It will automatically fall at the bottom of our list rankings, which determine what lists appear in searches and such.  Future changes at FreeLists may make your list even less desireable.
  * The feature may be removed at any point in the future.

Please think twice before password-protecting your list's archive.