[Righetti72] Mailing List and Spam

[Bill Tanner]

I'm sure everybody realizes that spam is a big part of the Internet
world and that it's a huge problem.  There have been a few spam
messages that went out through the mailing list and I wanted to let
you know what I've done to address the problem.

First, any e-mail address that gets used ends up with spammers.  They
find it in an e-mail or just blindly send to the "everyone" address at
domain names and hope to works.  It costs a spammer next to nothing to
send millions of e-mails so they can afford to take a wild guess.  My
personal e-mail address has been around for 10+ years and I get at
least a couple of hundred pieces of spam each day.  Fortunately, due
to automated spam filtering tools, only one or two messages a week
make it to my in-box.

The everyone at righetti72.com mailing list receives 50+ spam e-mails
every day.  However, the list processor automatically discards e-mails
that don't come from the e-mail address of a list member.  E-mails
that come from list members get moderated, i.e. they are held until I
review and release them.  I turned off moderation earlier in the year
to reduce any delays in reunion e-mails and some spam got through.  I
counted 16 spam messages between 1 March and 12 July when I turned
moderation back on.  Those messages tricked the list processor into
thinking they came from a member.  Now that moderation is back on, it
shouldn't happen again.

By the way, the very worst thing you can do when you get spam is reply
to it with a complaint.  That just tells the spammer that your e-mail
address has a person at the other end and it gets added to even more
spam lists.  There's actually no way for a spammer to find out the
individual e-mail address of a list member unless you reply.

Regards, Bill