On Fri, 31 Aug 2001, Jane Lyle wrote:

> The first few times it happened, we forwarded the messages to Hotmail and
> asked whether there was anything they could do about it. We didn't get a
> single response--not even an acknowledgment of our requests.

Guess what?  I received a response from Hotmail tech support just hours
after I sent in the complaint from my test Hotmail account:


---begin quote---
Hello Michael,

Thank you for contacting MSN Explorer Technical Support.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that you are experiencing.

We understand that you are talking about the MSN Explorer signature that
appears at the end of the emails.

We are sorry but ou cannot remove this signature from the emails. These
signatures are added from the Hotmail Servers by default. The feature to
remove them is not available.

We always appreciate receiving customer comments or feedback. Please take
a moment to submit your feedback at the below mentioned website:
     http://www.explorer.msn.com/feedback.htm
---end quote---


At this point, I'm tempted to suspect that there is a parsing problem in
LISTSERV that treats the Hotmail-generated automatic signature /
advertisement as the username field of the subscription request.  Because
I do not know how to reproduce the problem myself, I can but hope that the
LSoft staff might be able to guess where the problem might be and either
fix the "SUBSCRIBE" command parser or offer a workaround.

Hope this helps,
--
Michael S. Johnson   Miyazaki Web and Mailing List Owner
[log in to unmask]   www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/mailing-list