Most of this week, RootsWeb was either not receiving nor sending List email; during some periods some mail was being sent out, but in trickles. This is to let you users know what happened. A SPAMMER HIT US AGAIN! It really angers me that we have been injured once again by a SPAMMER. When these Lists were on MAISER at Indiana Univ., a SPAMMER crashed that system completely. It even caused some hardware to burn out. These opportunistic advertisers just don't realize the damage they do when they SPAM mailing lists. RootsWeb has over 4200 Lists now, and I would guess that the average subscriber list is around 500. That means that when the SPAMMER sends in the ads, the server receives 4200 identical emails all at the same time. Then, the server has to try to send out over 2 million emails, all at the same time. Now THAT is normally enough to shut down a server; however, it is even worse at RootsWeb, since SPAM-filters are in place. Those emails hit the server, the server attempted to kill them, then, because of the sheer computing power required, everything shut down. Once again we have not had access to normal mail because of the selfish actions of unscrupulous advertisers. Congress tried to rectify this problem, but special interest lobbyists go to enough of our repre- sentatives that they caved in and passed a bill that does nothing. I suggest that when you receive SPAM, send it back to the servers involved. Send to postmaster@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx, where the x's are replaced by the name of the server the SPAMMER is using. Make sure you "expand" the headers, then highlight and copy the entire message, including these expanded headers. THEN, make sure that you NEVER purchase anything from a company that engages in this practice. Sooner or later advertisers are going to learn that if they SPAM genealogy groups, they are doing nothing but angering users and hurting the reputations of their companies. Any discussion of this subject should be done privately to me, not back to the List. Thanks, SgtGeorge Listowner