On Wed, 2009-10-07 at 14:24 -0400, Olin Lathrop wrote:
> Anyway, I've been getting increasing amounts of spam to my PIClist email
> account.  I use a different address for the PIClist partly to avoid such
> problems, but since the PIClist has been logged at various sites everyone's
> PIClist email address is out there for spammers to harvest.  So the question
> is, can the server be set up to remove the FROM: address from messages and
> possibly substitute the list address?  Replies to PIClist messages should go
> to the list anyway.  If your mail address never appears in a message
> distributed by the server, then it won't matter how widely it gets
> distributed.  Does the server have this capability?  If so, is there a
> reason not to use it?  I expect this isn't the first time this issue has
> come up on a mailing list.
> 
> Maybe I'll try a experiment.  I'll make up a totally new email address, use
> it exclusively for sending to the PIClist, and never otherwise give it out.
> I will be interesting to see how long it takes to get the first spam and how
> quickly it ramps up.  I'll log the number of spam messages a day and show
> the results once a reasonable amount of data has been collected.  It may
> take a day or two before I do it because I've got stuff to get done right
> now, and I have to go digging in some very old dusty control files to change
> everything.

I've basically done that experiment. My address on the list is used just
for the list and nothing else. It has no spam protection on it. It
doesn't get any spam.

So, I don't believe the fact that your address is on the list is the
source of the spam.

I don't know if the list server supports masking of the From address
(perhaps one of the other admins does). Personally, I don't like it
simply because then it isn't possible to respond to someone "offlist",
which would result in tons of "can you contact me at this address" types
of messages on the list, yuk...

TTYL

-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist