Someone is using your mailing lists to direct unwanted
"noise" email at another mailing list. They think it's
fun to subscribe a discussion mailing list address for
one of your no-posting-allowed mailing lists and annoy
a few hundred people a day. The guy who wrote you is
probably not the same person who subscribed the cypherpunks
list to whichever of your lists attracted his attention.
Furthermore, he may have used the unsubscribe link correctly,
but the attacker, whomever he is, probably just resubscribed
the cypherpunks list the same day.
You need to provide a PERMANENT unsubscribe option, so
that the cypherpunks addresses can be unsubscribed in a
way that won't allow this bozo to resubscribe them.
At various times, I think I've seen at least six different
gagler lists, and I was just hitting 'delete' the instant I
saw the word 'Gagler' in them (eventually, I made the reflex
automatic via a procmail script). So probably all eight have
been used at one time or another, as often as this bozo
gets around to resubscribing cypherpunks to them all.
Since cypherpunks has ten different "to" addresses, and
you have eight different mailing lists, that's eighty
different combinations that this bozo can play with.
I don't know how many he's used, but somebody (probably
your annoyed correspondent below) has started taking it
really personally and is apparently actually trying to
unsub all eighty combinations daily. Judging from the
messages in my spam folder, (whatever-of-the-day, every
*other* day, to different cypherpunks addresses) I'd say
this subscribe/unsubscribe fight has probably been going
on for at least a few weeks, maybe a couple of months.
Can you blame the guy for being frustrated?!
I don't think it's probably wise to just blow it off.
Allowing your system to be used as a weapon is almost
as bad as directly *using* it as a weapon, and your
upstreams are not likely to be too happy if they start
popping up on black-hole lists and their subscribers
can't get mail through to anybody at an ISP that filters.
Personally, I don't give a crap, because I long since
just put 'gagler' in my killfile and there's nobody at your
upstreams I'd be upset by losing contact with. But I was
going through my spam folder and saw how clueless you were
about what's been going on. So I took pity and I thought I'd
send you some explanation of what the hell is up, just so
you can do something to avoid getting reamed as bad as it
looks like you're about to.
The wise thing to do would be to make unsubscribe for a
particular address permanent (ie, don't allow resubscription).
Seriously. This isn't a threat, this is just advice. It is
what you can do to make the problem go away.
I'm sure your postmaster at datareturn.com will agree.
Bear
On Sun, 21 Jan 2001, Gagler wrote:
>Which one of our 8 lists could you not followthe instructions?
>
>Thanks-
>
>Gagler
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Sent: Sunday, January 21, 2001 12:00 AM
>Subject: Unsubscribe broken while you spam this address
>
>
>> Your unsubscribe process, both the web page and the email
>process are
>> broken. STOP SPAMMING THIS ADDRESS!!!
>>
>> SPAM IS THEFT OF SERVICE, NETWORK ABUSE, AND TRESPASSING!!!
>>
>> GO AWAY!!!!
>>
>> The next complaint goes to Paul Vixie at the MAPS Realtime
>Blackhole List
>> (RBL) and your upstream ISP's.
>>
>>
>
