[BITList] Spurious msgs sent to the BitList

[John Feltham]

G’day folks,

For some period of time now I have been receiving spam directed at this List.

It is the only Mythic-Beasts List that I run, that is affected by this.

I have received some suggestions to my idea of renaming the List to some other name, from M-B. - See below.

I favour changing the name.

AFAIK no-one appears to read the archives which would be lost [I think] if we change the name.

The last suggestion from Richard means that anyone wanting to join us won’t get through to me. In other words - each of us would have to issue invitations to peole that we know.. Please comment on this aspect as well.

Can we have a few days of looking at this?

Answers can be sent to me privately or to the Lists whichever you prefer.

Thanks. and my thanks to Richard for his suggestions.

John.



Begin forwarded message:

From: Mythic Support 
Subject: Re:  Spurious msgs sent to the BitList
Date: 21 March 2014 8:57:07 am AEST
To: John Feltham <wantok at me.com>

--
Hi John,

> But all of my Lists are supposed to be “labled not published” as being a List on your site.

That's correct.  There are no links or other references to the list on our site.  But once a link gets out "in the wild", anyone can find it, and judging from a Google search, that's happened.  I don't know precisely how that's happened.  Perhaps someone briefly had a link on their website or blog?  Perhaps someone forwarded a message from the list to somewhere that's publicly archived?  It's possible (but I think unlikely) that 'bitlist' was obvious enough that a spammer guessed it.  Perhaps one of the subscribers' mail got hacked?  It's very difficult to determine.

> Do I have to request that the name of the List be changed to
> a new name?
> 
> If so I don’t care about holding on to the past msgs.

That should prevent it, though at the cost of some inconvenience to your mailing list subscribers.  If you wish us to do that, can you select another name?

> I’m not interested in having to go to the server every day just to delete spam msgs.

Another possibility is to disable notification of new subscription attempts.  Whether that's feasible will depend on whether you expect to get new subscribers "out of the blue".

Richard Smith
Mythic Beasts Ltd







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