At 10:02 PM 6/1/2001, you said: >A few days ago, I received an email with the Subject: Re: >unsubscribe, >and only one word in the body, "unsubscribe". The sender did not >indicate >from which List he wished to be unsubscribed. I searched through >the >user lists for the 21 Lists I manage and couldn't find his >address. So, I >replied to him, asking for clarification. (The "unsubscribe" email >came to >me privately, not through Rootsweb.) > >Today I received a reply from him explaining what had happened. I >still >don't know how the "FormMail Threat" works, but somehow it can >"spoof" email addresses. Heaven knows why anyone would want to >spoof an unsubscribe email! It's not clear if the email I received >was >generated as a result of someone scanning my website at Rootsweb or >the website of the person whose address was "spoofed". If anyone >knows anything about this, please reply here for benefit of us all. > >Below is an extract of the pertinent part of the email I received. > >SgtGeorge George, What probably happened was your site got "spidered" by a robot. It records anything on your website that has a "mailto:" reference in the html source. Then the robot is probably configured to "spoof" addresses that are picked up so that the spammers can hide behind it. So it's working two ways, it's going to send spam to any email address that it picked up, and it's going to try to hide behind any of the email addresses that it picks up. Does this make sense? If you want, you can protect yourself by using a Java Script that is set up for "Anti-Spam email". If you do a web search for free Java Scripts, you should find one of the "Anti-spam email scripts" on one of the free sites. Debbie