1) We are all insulted and disturbed by the spam e-mails that we occasionally receive via birders. It is best to just a) delete the message and b) if you feel the need, look at the header of the message to see from where it originated and e-mail the postmaster to complain. In this case I complained to abuse@aol.com and got a canned response saying they would look into it. ISPs are sick of having their name sullied like this and many cancel the account or even sue such spammers. [Jan Berry says that complaints about spamming on AOL should be sent to AOL's regulatory posting: TOSEmail1@aol.com.]
2) With our current technical situation it would be very difficult to do anything about it on our end. The one way we could do it is to "moderate" the newsgroup which would mean that someone would need to read every single post to birders and forward it on to confirm that it was legitimate. This would be a huge amount of work and would delay potential time-sensitive posts. We can't just filter the posts because the spams usually come from different addresses each time.
Bob Rommel suggests another option, viz., to make it so that mail to birders@umich.edu could only come from other members of the mailing list plus perhaps a small subset of outside addresses. This would be possible if we were using a flexible UNIX system. Unfortunately, I have spoken with the folks at ITD about this specifically and they said that it is not currently available with the X500 lists we use. If I find out about any way to do this with X500, we will look into implementing it.
It is best not to post to the whole group about spam as it ends up wasting bandwidth and the more experienced users know to ignore it - even though we all find it offensive. If you want to bring a spam matter to our attention send a note to subscribe_birders@umich.edu as with all administrative matters. One other potential solution would be to remove the birders@umich.edu address from every web site as the addresses are usually picked up by web crawlers which examine all sites, but this would prevent us from letting others know about the group.
I apologize that we can't do more at this point but ask your forbearance.
-- Rick Neubig 10-23-98
More recent information about combatting spam is in the message below that I received from the ITD User Advocate Group. The key items are:
1) You can send complaints about spam to ITD-Prod1@umich.edu. When reporting spam, make sure to include the full headers. For information on how to do this, see http://www.flash.net/~support/esupport/headers.html.If you want to join a fight against spam, see http://www.cauce.org. Also see http://spam.abuse.net/spam/.2) You can ask your group owners to block mail from the domain of origin of the spam for a day or two if there is a spam "mailstorm".
-- Bruce Bowman 10-3-99
From: "ITD-Prod1"
To: "Bruce M. Bowman"
Date sent: Thu, 18 Mar 1999 12:18:17 -0500
Subject: Re: (Fwd) Your Question on: spam
Thank you for your message about an information technology-related policy or incident. We have logged your message and are investigating it.
If you have reported an incident that you believe violates State or Federal laws or puts you in danger, please do not wait for the User Advocate to investigate the incident. Report it immediately to the UM Department of Public Safety and Security by calling (734) 763-1131.
If a mailgroup that you are a member of is involved in a [spam] "mailstorm," you can send to "yourgroupname"-owners@umich.edu asking them to remove the "Associated Domain" field from the group's X.500 entry for 24-48 hours until the "storm" subsides. (Your group's owner will use http://directory.umich.edu to do this.)
We will contact you only if:
- You have asked for clarification of an IT policy;
- we require more information; or
- we are able to report resolution of the incident you reported.
Because of the large number of complaints we receive regarding unsolicited bulk e-mail, we will investigate such incidents, but will not respond to those messages individually.
Dora Winter & Jim Knox, ITD User Advocate Group