Clearly there is a problem. In the last few days there has been the start of a flow of unsolicited mail.
My experience is that spammers get the addresses by harvesting them from websites. This means someone, somewhere has put [EMAIL PROTECTED] on an unprotected website. Please check your webpages and remove that address if you have it. I have found one reference in the GML FAQ which I have removed. As has been said, once this starts things will only tend to get worse until several weeks after the address is removed from the website. I originally believed we could take our time in finding a new home, but I now think there is more urgency if we are going to lose subscribers due to spam. As I see it we have five options, which is too many to vote on so we need to discus this a bit to eliminate things down to two or three at most. The options are - a) Tony's offer of his private server. b) Michelle Haines' husband, Kirk, an IT professional has offered to host the list for free. c) Yahoo d) Topica, like yahoo, but less complicated, but does not have some of the add-ons like polls, and file areas that Yahoo have. e) Somewhere else I am very grateful for Tony and Kirk offering their own hardware and software for this, but I would prefer an organisation that does not rely on any single individual in case something was to happen to them. I prefer Topica over Yahoo because other than a pop-up on their website there is no advertising. I of course welcome the views of others, and am interested in any alternative ideas anyone may have. In case we need to move quickly, I recommend those who have not yet done so to subscribe to Topica so we can at least continue the discussion there if this list becomes flooded in spam making it unusable. At least, if you are considering leaving the GML due to spam, consider joining the Topica list so we can tell you where we have gone! All you need do is post a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Julian [EMAIL PROTECTED] National Gerbil Society http://www.gerbils.co.uk/
