On Tue, 12 March 2002, Stijn De Preter wrote I am a newbie to spam-fighting ...
BUT, I have owned several Yahoo!Groups lists for several years and know lots of other list owners. And Yahoo!Groups is simply not known as an organization that replies to very many inquiries from its customers. They may never get back to you. But don't take it personally. I'm guessing it's because they run tens of thousands of lists with several million members and they simply cannot keep up with the number of inquiries they get. Also, I don't know how useful it's going to be to focus on Yahoo!Groups in trying to come up with ways to solve your problem. If anyone knows better, please let me know IMMEDIATELY but ... It's entirely possible that Yahoo is not distributing your listowner address. You did the logical thing in not listing your group, but expecting total privacy, in my opinion, is just asking too much. Whatever Yahoo's policies are, they probably cannot guarantee that you won't receive spam at that address. And it may be their policy to give people a way to get in contact with owners of all lists. I also get spam at my listowner addresses. It's just too easy to guess at the names of unlisted groups and attaching "-owner" afterward. You can simply generate the url of any group by going to <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/????/> and subbing the question marks with a likely name. There's probably a searching device that will throw up the names of ALL groups, listed or unlisted, by using the question marks as wildcards. Even if it is a private group, anyone snooping for the group homepage will get a message saying they are unauthorized to view information about the group -- and that in itself will confirm the existence of the group. In addition, there may be disgruntled people who are simply adding your listowner email address to "opt-in" lists. The spam probably has nothing to do with Yahoo. Once that happens, of course, your listowner address will be sold to other spammers. That's what happened to me. You probably know this already, but is the spam going out to the members of the list? It didn't sound as if it was, but if so, you can put all new members on "moderation." That way any email a recent member will send will be held until you can get a chance to look at it before accepting or rejecting it. Also, is this an "annoucement" list only? Because unless you have your settings set just right, people who are not on the list could be trying to send spam to the entire list and that email is bouncing to you after being rejected. But, hey, if you come up with a way to stop this, put me at the top of your list of people to inform ... > > Hi, > I would like to raise a problem that may have already been discussed > here. If so, my apologies. > I am the moderator of a non-listed yahoo group. We specifically opted > not to be listed to avoid spamming and other inconveniences. > Over the past months, we have been receiving an increasing number of > spam mails, which are sent to the group owner' address. The owner and > moderators never requested this facility and we never authorised yahoo > to distribute our address for commercial purposes. > Immediately after the spamming began, I requested yahoo groups to scrap > the owner account, giving a full explanation. Yahoo never complied with > our request. Yahoo never responded to the point that the owner account > was created against the members' wishes. we referred the matter to > TRUSTe, without any result or reaction so far. > I accept that spammers may have intercepted the group's name and may > have deducted the owner's account from that information. This means that > Yahoo, technically speaking, may not be held responsible for the spamming. > My questions: > 1. by not responsing favourably to our requests, is Yahoo not breaking > its own privacy policy, when it states that "Yahoo! gives you the > ability to edit your Yahoo! Account Information > <http://edit.yahoo.com/config/eval_profile> and preferences at any time, > including whether you want Yahoo! to contact you about specials and new > products." > 2. what would you advise us to do in order to get a positive response > from Yahoo ? > Thanks. > > _______________________________________________ > spamcon-general mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://mail.spamcon.org/mailman/listinfo/spamcon-general#subscribers > Subscribe, unsubscribe, etc: Use the URL above or send "help" in body > of message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Contact administrator: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ spamcon-general mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.spamcon.org/mailman/listinfo/spamcon-general#subscribers Subscribe, unsubscribe, etc: Use the URL above or send "help" in body of message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Contact administrator: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
