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ADMIN: New policies

IMPORTANT!  PLEASE READ TO THE END, THEN SEND COMMENTS TO lindsey@mallorn.com!

As most of you probably have noticed, there's been an influx of messages
on these lists regarding an unsolicted advertisement that was sent out
for the sale of cheese ball recipes.

It's my opinion that this wasn't a valid ad and was more likely an attempt
to get someone's name blacklisted.  Nobody would forge their email address
but still include their home address AND have their phone number listed
unless they were nuts.  So some poor soul is probably getting thousands
of prank calls at all hours of the night in retribution when they had
nothing to do with it.

This doesn't make it right, of course.  A lot of you have been wondering
what spam is, how to react to it, etc.  A good web page to visit is

   http://spam.abuse.net/spam/

Originally started by Paul Vixie et al, this provides victims of spammers
with solutions and information.  Join the anti-spam campaign!

Now down to business.  A number of actions have been performed in response
to this incident:

   o The involved Internet Service Providers have until midnight tonight
     to provide me with proof that they are taking steps to prevent usage
     as a remailer, or the following domains will no longer accept email
     from them:

        mallorn.com
        ncsa.uiuc.edu
        wolfram.com
        ithilien.com
        [ other domains that wish to remain anonymous ]

   o Official notification to various spamming authorities

   o Changed list policies

This last option is still underway.  In its current state, the list will
accept mail from anybody.  This is an open invitation for spammers and
the like, but gets around the problem of people using multiple
email addresses, etc.

I think that the best solution is to change the list configurations to
only accept mail from known subscribers.  I have gone through all past
messages and pulled out all known addresses that messages have come 
from.  These can be used as a base, and if anyone has any other addresses
that they use then I can update the list on an individual basis.

What do you think of this solution?  Will it cause anyone problems?

Please respond to lindsey@mallorn.com with any comments, and I will
summarize later.

Thanks,

Chris
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