To all subscribers of the Lists I manage: First and foremost -- DO NOT reply to SPAM messages to the Lists! It is being taken care of. Secondly, and equally as important -- DO NOT post messages to the Lists about this subject !!!!! You just do not know what is going on behind the scenes -- I'm up to my ears in unread email right now. If you MUST comment on the SPAM problem, send me a private email. DO NOT POST ANY MESSAGE TO THE LISTS IN RELATION TO THIS SUBJECT !!!!!! (Thanks.) Now, some of you may know, and some may not, that we were hit last night by the $%#&$&@* from Atlanta, GA, that crashed MAISER at Indiana University. He has evidently "found" our Lists on RootsWeb and sent out the same SPAM advertisements that he did at MAISER. Some Lists got hit and some didn't. If you didn't get the garbage, consider yourself lucky. Basically, what he did is send a long ad for his "toner" products to all the Lists at RootsWeb. There are probably 2,000 Lists there now, and if each averages 200 users, that's 400,000 individual emails that RootsWeb would have had to store and process, then send out. That's what crashed MAISER. It just couldn't handle it and froze up, after one hard drive had been physically destroyed. Actually, I received 6 duplicate messages on the HOMESPUN List, and 3-5 on some of the others. It is not at all inconceivable that were the spammer totally successful that RootsWeb would have to handle a million messages all at the same time. That would not be pretty!! BE WARNED !!!!! I am asking RootsWeb to re-configure my Lists so that only subscribers may post email to them. This may cause problems for some users who have "dynamic" email addresses. Some servers can't seem to settle down and decide on a domain name, so users addresses keep changing. If any of you have problems posting to the Lists after the changeover, I will receive the posts instead of them going to the Lists. I will get in touch with anyone who is having problems. I will try to keep everyone informed on what is going on. Just be patient and remember, DO NOT send ANY email to the Lists concerning SPAM, "Toner Man", or this problem in general. SgtGeorge Listowner