I realize that there is a special list for discussing spam, but I think my questions are nevertheless appropriate for Lstown-L. If not, I apologize. I also realize that these subjects have been discussed in the past. I apologize for the repetition but am seeking current thoughts. (With all these apologies, surely people will now take pity and help me figure out the best course of action. :-) I run two listserv lists, one of which is full of people who don't really mind excessive mail and are quick with the delete key, the other of which is a much more serious professional list with subscribers who are highly displeased when spam shows up in their mail. Unfortunately, listserv's spam-filter works alphabetically, catching almost all of the spam aimed at the list that is more tolerant of junk mail (Words-L) and catching almost none of the spam aimed at the professional list less tolerant of excess mail (ADS-L). After a new burst of spam over the weekend (none of which made it to Words-L, all of which was posted on ADS-L), the subscribers on ADS-L have asked me to try to do something about the problem. Short of changing the name of the list to something that doesn't start with an A, a solution that none of us like (ADS=American Dialect Society), I can see two possible actions: (1) Change the list to 'send=private'. I did that yesterday, but people aren't happy with the change. Here's a sample of mail I've gotten about it: > My problem is with my university. When I subscribed to > ADS-L (my favorite list), my email address was as above except that "zoo" > was then "moose." I can still receive mail addressed to "moose"--or to > "zoo," "elk," or "gnu." The problem is that I never know which of these > creatures is actually going to send out a particular message, and I can't > control that. If ADS-L is private, then many (most?) of my postings will > bounce, and I don't know what to do about the situation. Do you have any > suggestions? I realize that a solution for somebody with totally different addresses is to subscribe from all of them and set all but one to 'nomail'. Will that work when all of these addresses are really the "same" address in a way? (I don't understand why her university does this kind of thing. It seems more sensible to me to have a system like ours. I'm just as likely to be sending mail from isis.msstate.edu as from ra.msstate.edu, but it gets magically turned into mail from ra.msstate.edu even if I'm on isis. Can you tell yet that I'm a non-techy?) (2) Set 'sizelim=200'. That would catch the longer spam. But it would also catch longer legitimate postings, of course, like an occasional paper-in-progress or bibliography. And it wouldn't catch short spam. I'm leaning at this point toward changing 'send=private' back to 'send= public' and setting the 'sizelim' instead. Any advice you can give me will be appreciated. Another thought: How about changing the spam-filter's order of detective work, Eric, to start at the end of the alphabet instead of the beginning? --Natalie ([log in to unmask])