No, there is no account compromise. It is simple spam by spoofing: there is no authentication when sending email and anyone can claim to be whoever they like when sending a message.
We have had a few instances in the past, but a specific spammer has recently targeted vim_use and has sent warez spam using two different spoofed addresses. I am not going to discuss the particular cases in detail in public, but I will finish with a general rant: Google Groups is utterly broken, and the spam tide is very likely to become overwhelming as other spammers realise how easy it is to screw us. There is a "help forum" for Google Groups but it consists entirely of unanswered requests for help. Google staff never gave useful help, but they have now abandoned the forum: http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Groups-Guide Spammers can buy a $60 program that generates five Google accounts per minute (breaking the captcha). I suspect that methods to automate spoofing will become more widespread. To illustrate: vim_use has 3140 members of which 1247 are banned spammers (over one third of the member list consists of throw-away spam accounts). In the past the mailing list was badly burned when a mail system run by a volunteer collapsed. It seems unlikely that we will return to a volunteer-run system, but continuing with Google Groups may become untenable because I suspect that many of us have a low tolerance for spam. I found two threads where people from various groups are complaining about the spoofing issue: http://groups.google.com/group/is-something-broken/browse_thread/thread/bb1be2db0b9e2f0f http://groups.google.com/group/is-something-broken/browse_thread/thread/2628577f40d32180 We can assume that the spoofing problem is very widespread because most group admins would not bother posting on the obviously defunct help forum. John --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message from the "vim_use" maillist. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
