Thank you, Judy, for the info on forwarding spam to abuse@rootsweb.com and asking for action. The following is their initial response. I'm posting it here because I think it's valuable information for all of us on how to deal with this problem to keep it from ruining *our* List. Karen Tim Pierce writes: This is an automatic response to the mail you sent to abuse@rootsweb.com. I'm Tim Pierce, senior system administrator for the RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative. Currently I handle all mail for abuse@rootsweb.com, and will generally act within minutes on any report of a RootsWeb-related attack. Important! If you're complaining about ``spam'' you've received recently (unsolicited commercial e-mail), MAKE SURE THAT THE SPAM CAME FROM ROOTSWEB! Check the full headers of the message and see if there's a ``rootsweb.com'' anywhere in there. If the spam didn't come from our machines, there just isn't anything that I can do about it -- sorry. These recent spams have already been dealt with: * report@top-10.com: "Visibility Report" * uinfo78@yahoo.com: "STOP SICKNESS AND DISEASE FOREVER!" * seedman8@apexmail.com: "$1 Goes A Long Way!!!" * LJGEG@aol.com: "The Sanarchist Cookbook" * "Photo Mousepads" [GIDGE1026@aol.com, Amyj4547@aol.com, etc.] * "Cable Descrambler" [GIDGE1026@aol.com, Amyj4547@aol.com, etc.] Thanks for your extra reports, though: they give us more evidence to use, should we ever be able to mount a legal battle against this stuff. ----------------------------- If the spam didn't come from RootsWeb, what can you do about it? - Ask your local tech support folks for help identifying the sender. Many ISPs provide someone like me whose job it is to complain about spam on behalf of all their users. Find out whether there's such a person at your site. - Join CAUCE, the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail. These folks, who really have their act together, are lobbying Congress to pass a bill to criminalize junk e-mail. They can use all the help they can get. See http://www.cauce.org. - If you're a U.S. citizen, write to your Congressional representatives and urge them to co-sponsor HR 1748, the "Netizens Protection Act of 1997" sponsored by Rep. Christopher Smith of New Jersey. This bill would extend existing laws against junk faxes against junk e-mail, and is the only bill presently before Congress that would stop spam before it starts. I do try to ensure that no spam makes it through our systems twice (or even once if that's possible), and I try to respond to every RootsWeb-related spam report that I get. If you haven't heard from me in a day or so and are concerned that I missed your complaint, don't be shy -- remind me. Thanks for supporting RootsWeb! Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative system obfuscator and hack-of-all-trades