While I do think a few comments were not written in the most congenial language & could be subject to misunderstanding by some readers, I do have to say that most of the comments did include some helpful information for 'newbie' administrators like me. While I only have one list that does not seem to be greatly active, I have seen a number of obvious spam mails coming in. This conversation has given me some good information on evaluating suspicious but not clearly spam requests and possible ways to handle such subscription requests. It does seem that at this point it is judicial to end this thread, but I did want to point out the educational benefits to those of us who are new to the job. Linda Hopper Jowers NCScots List