[EL] Listserv Subscriptions

[Lowenstein, Daniel]

            The listserv receives a substantial number of subscription requests from spammers.  They tend to come in spurts and spurts sometimes follow a particular pattern.  Usually they are easily identifiable as spam because the name and/or the e-mail address is gibberish.  For the past few weeks there has been a steady volume of them in which both the name and the e-mail address are plausible but they do not match.  Rick tells me there has been a similar pattern on the Legislation listserv that he manages solely.

            When I receive a subscription request from someone I don't know and from an e-mail address that is not self-validating, I request the subscriber to state briefly an affiliation or reason for interest.  Although it is interesting to find out about the variety of people who subscribe, the reason for this is to screen out the rare person who has a commercial purpose or otherwise might misuse the listserv.

            Because I have been receiving so many spam requests following the pattern described above, I have been rejecting requests when the name and the e-mail don't match, rather than requesting an affiliation.  Rick has been doing the same for Legislation.  However, sometimes real people do have mismatched names and e-mails, for various reasons and I'd be sorry to reject such a person.  I believe that many new subscribers are referred by existing subscribers.  If you recommend the listserv to anyone whose e-mail address might not look right on first sight, please suggest to the person that he send me a quick e-mail identifying himself and saying that he wants to subscribe to the e-mail, in order to avoid a peremptory rejection.  Thanks, and now you can go back to celebrating or mourning the late election.


                                                    Best,

                                                    Daniel Lowenstein
                                                    Director
                                                    UCLA Center for the Liberal Arts and Free Institutions (CLAFI)
                                                    310-825-5148
                                                    lowenstein at law.ucla.edu<mailto:lowenstein at law.ucla.edu>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20121107/e6f00feb/attachment.html>