Re: SPAM Messages

[Jeffrey A Law <law at cygnus dot com>]

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From:     Craig Burley <burley@gnu.org>
To:       law@cygnus.com
Date:     Tue, 4 Aug 1998 12:27:04 -0400 (EDT)
Subject:  Spam spam spam spam ... (was Re: Last minute holidays!!)

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Personally, I enjoyed reading these two rebuts to the SPAM we received,
but I'd like to quickly note a few things:

  -  NEVER respond to SPAM, no matter *what* the message says about
     "Remove" instructions.  It is *quite* likely that, by responding,
     you're simply sending the spammers more email addresses (such
     as yours) to use and share with (or sell to) all the other
     spammers throughout the world.

  -  If the SPAM you receive came through a list you're on, it is
     probably best to remove that list itself from the "To" and "Cc"
     fields, unless your email is really for list members to *read*.

     That is, if *you* don't like SPAM, probably nobody else on the
     list does, and probably nobody wants to read how upset you are
     about the spam, because they're already just as annoyed.

     Exceptions include email like this saying "people on this list
     should not respond to spam *on this list*".  ;-)

     Cc'ing the list maintainer in email to a postmaster somewhere
     about spam might be okay, though.

  -  NEVER respond to SPAM.  I really mean this.  That's why I
     repeated it.  If you want to *discuss* things related to the
     SPAM, this means DO NOT INCLUDE ANY SPAMMER'S EMAIL ADDRESSES
     IN THE LIST OF RECIPIENTS!!!

     Otherwise, not only is *your* email address "harvested" as a
     future "we know there's a person behind this" address for spamming,
     anyone who absent-mindedly responds to *your* email without
     trimming the spammer's address (as I've done) also gets *their*
     email address harvested this way.

If anyone has a URL or two to point people on this list to, which
would describe some of these basic rules and how to handle spamming,
(which I don't really know much about), that might be a good idea,
but we should probably pass it through the list maintainer first
(whoever that is -- the "-request" address, anyway), so we don't
end up with 10 people sending the same URLs.

(Perhaps I should have followed my own advice and sent *this*
to the -request address, but I'm concerned it'll be swallowed
up by MajorDomo or something.  So I'll send it to Jeff Law instead
and let him decide what to do about it.)

        tq vm, (burley)

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