MODERATOR NOTE: Unintended Spam Messages
Apologies to list members that received some or all
of the 21 spam messages that evidently went out to
the list this morning.
At first, when I started receiving them, I assumed
that some spammer was simply forging subject lines
to make the messages look like they were legitimate
list postings... then I started looking closely at
the posts and realized that they were really being
distributed by our list management software.
The next thought I had was that someone had broken
through the security precautions that are in place
and was acting with list moderator privileges. At
present, I don't think that is what happened however.
This is what I think happened... The Online Ads list
receives one to two hundred spam messages each day sent
to the list posting address. Several times each day
I will sort through the messages to delete the spams
and moderate the real submissions. I did that when I
started work this morning... and I must have accidentally
hit the "approve" button instead of the "reject" button.
On the version of Lyris that we use, the two buttons
are located right next to each other... which is
perhaps not the very best design feature. I've never
made that mistake before, but I guess for all things
there is a first time.
In any event, at present I'm fairly sure that the distribution
that occurred this morning was due to operator error,
and not a breach of security. I had planned to make
some changes to the list this weekend that would
end the problem of receiving all the spam messages
at the submission email address. Looks like the
changes will come a few days to late...
I apologize to the 500 or so list members that
received the spams... now I have to figure out if
there is a way to kill tonight's digest so another
6500 people don't get them as well!
--Cliff
Cliff Kurtzman
Moderator
Online Advertising Discussion List
http://www.o-a.com/
281-480-6300
Received on Fri Jul 18 2003 - 10:29:04 CDT
