Administrivia: SPAM control accounts...

[Daniel Hanson <dhanson () securityfocus com>]

Hi all,

I just posted a message to the list, and was dismayed with the number of
vacation messages, account full, and other auto-response messages that I
received. Most disturbing was the people who had subscribed to the mailing
list from one of those "Click here to have your message go through to the
recipient"  SPAM control accounts. I always wonder how these people manage
to actually subscribe in the first place, but that is just an aside.

While I can understand the vacation messages (people in a hurry, not aware
of their actions) these SPAM control accounts are just plain rude on a
mailing list (I won't debate their use for non-mailing list email). There
is nothing more disconcerting about posting to a mailing list, and having
your email box fill up with automated messages. In general the subscribers
to this list are quite good, and when I have sent a message, I usually get
around 10-15, but there are 15000+ subscribers on this list, and it takes
just a very small percentage of those to turn this 5-15 messages into a
mailbox filling flood.

So PLEASE do not subscribe from addresses that have an auto-response
associated with it, we have headers in the mail that can be used to filter
out the list traffic for exclusion.

Incidently for anyone who does subscribe from one of these accounts, I
will not click on the link, you will be unsubscribed, and I will even send
an email stating why you have been unsubscribed, but in all likelyhood,
that message will not get through, so you will just silently stop
receiving the small subset of messages that you were getting anyways (I
can't see most posters actually caring whether you receive their post, so
I suspect that these people are receiving almost none of the list
traffic.)

I realize that I am essentially preaching to the converted (I think I have
unsubscribed everyone on one of those services), but in case anyone is
changing accounts, or going on vacation, please keep this in mind.

Thanks for the time.

Daniel

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