My apologies if this problem is resolved in the archives but I have 
been unable to find it, despite finding something related from 2000 
(see below).

MEDLAB-L has recently had an incredible increase in spam sent to the
listname-request address. Each day I'm getting the error reports 
(100s of them) with the subject line " MEDLAB-L: error report from 
BUFFALO.EDU" (using v. 1.8e). Each report reads "This is the 
qmail-send program at buffalo.edu..." and reports a variation of "the 
sender does not have a Yahoo account" or "...Possible forgery or 
deactivated due to abuse..." and ending with the standard request@ 
message: "Your message to [log in to unmask] has 
been forwarded to the "list owner"....."

Back in 2000 Francoise wrote (in part) :
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:         Wed, 20 Dec 2000 11:04:08 -0500
From:         Francoise Becker <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Re: SPAM

"....The good news is that the next version of LISTSERV (and perhaps 
even the 2000b release of 1.8d?) applies LISTSERV's spam protection 
to the listname-request address. So if your LISTSERV site is on the 
LISTSERV network, and the spam is caught by the spam-filter, then you 
won't get those particular pieces even when sent to the -request address."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

If what Francoise wrote then is correct, I'm guessing that spam 
protection is not catching spam sent to [log in to unmask] Is this 
correct or have I misunderstood something?

Is it possible to identify or somehow differentiate listserv error 
messages based on non-confirmed messages (spam) sent to the 
listname-request@? At my end, filtering them into a mailbox based on 
"Possible forgery" or "the sender does not have" keywords is one way. 
Is there a better way to prevent opening each and every error message 
based on spam to [log in to unmask] Or from a larger perspective, is 
there a way that I can save the site that generously hosts the list 
from notifying me that  messages sent to  listname-request@ were 
non-confirmed (and by implication, likely spam)?

Thanks for any advice.
Cheers, Pat