Dealing with SPAM

Occasionally some bozo decides to spam the GCC mailing lists. While we wish this would not happen, it is a fact of life on an open list (we do not want to run a list where only members can post).

Some simple guidelines for how to deal with SPAM to the lists can help avoid creating unnecessary traffic:

• Never respond to SPAM, no matter what the message says about "remove" instructions. It is quite likely that by responding you're simply sending the spammers more email addresses (such as yours) to use and share.

• If the SPAM you receive came through a list, remove that list itself should you decide to react after all, unless your email is really for list members to read.

  That is, if *you* don't like SPAM, probably nobody else on the list does, and probably nobody wants to read how upset you are about the spam, because they're already just as annoyed.

  Exceptions include email like this saying "people on this list should not respond to spam *on this list*". ;-)

• Never respond to SPAM. Really. If you want to *discuss* things related to the SPAM, do not include spammers.

  Otherwise, not only is your email address "harvested" as a future "we know there's a person behind this" address, anyone who absent-mindedly responds to your email without trimming the spammer's address also gets their address harvested.

Also check out www.abuse.net.