Date:  Wed, 10 Apr 1996 11:14:59 -0400

From:  ALICE FABER <faber[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]HASKINS.YALE.EDU>

Subject: Junk Mail



In response to, I believe, Ron Butters' comment that all we have to do is hit

delete when we get junk mail, I have to say that it's not that simple. For

those of us who get ADS-L in digest form, hitting delete when we see junk mail

in the digest means that we miss legitimate posts as well.



In response to Bethany's suggestion about emailing postmasters, unless you're

*very* good at reading headers, that's a dangerous thing to do. The magazine

spam that we got hit with twice is notorious all over the net, and has been

the subject of much discussion on the net-abuse usenet groups. Essentially,

what the perpetrator does is forge return addresses. The From line might have

indicated that it came from an AOL account, but that was a forgery. For more

than you ever wanted to know on this subject, read news.admin.net-abuse.misc.

This is a chronic net problem, that seems to crop up more on holidays (when

people assume that the net.police will be off holidaying).



Finally, I would strongly support a maximum posting length of 200 lines (or

even less). That would unequivocally bounce this spam. I suspect the only

overly long postings from ADS-L regulars would be postings quoting a previous

posting in its entirety. Longer legitimate postings (like, for instance, the

government funding updates) can be placed on the web site, with a short

pointer sent of to the list.



Alice Faber

faber[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]haskins.yale.edu