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further notes on list-bombing

``` Many more people have replied to my query about mysterious subscriptions to mailing lists. I haven't been able to reply to everybody, but here is a summary of the additional points that various people raised:

(1) My overall sense is that the Internet is in fact experiencing a serious epidemic of subscription forgeries right now. People who maintain a very wide range of mailing lists reported such incidents, primarily in the last few weeks.

(2) Several people explained ways, other than using Web browsers, to forge e-mail headers. I don't suppose I should describe them; they are not very interesting. I would like to see pressure on authors of software that sends mail to remove features that make it easy to forge headers. We probably can't make it impossible, but at least we can get rid of the amateurs. I won't recount the even more destructive (if also more creative) possible uses of forged headers that some people suggested.

(3) Some people attested cases in which a university or online service had recycled an old user's name, giving it to someone else, so that the new user got all of the old user's mailing list subscriptions.

(4) It's worth pointing out, in case any list-bombers are reading this, that even if your intended victim deserves it, list-bombing has nonetheless been causing an awful lot of pain to innocent parties. The most obvious are the list-owners who have to deal with complaints, remove addresses, etc. But the other subscribers of the list must often wade through messages to the whole list from victims, followed by other messages in reply that are probably not relevant to the list's intended topic.

(5) One person told me about a company that had had two of its machines changed to a different domain with InterNIC. (It's sort of like the practice of "slamming" someone to a different long-distance carrier.) But it sounds like InterNIC is on top of the problem.

(6) Some people asked whether we log subscription requests; if we were to save the complete header for each such request, then we might be able to notice discrepancies and identify where the bogus messages were from. I don't think we do log the requests. RRE has about 3600 subscribers and a fair amount of turnover, so the log file would grow quickly if it kept the complete headers. Some of the X.400 headers from Europe are pretty darn long.

(7) One person speculated that some of the mystery subscriptions may have come from friends subscribing friends to the list without telling them. Who knows.

(8) Finally, just in case any of the mystery subscriptions were intended as revenge against me rather than against the involuntary subscriber, at least a third of the involuntary subscribers say that they actually like the list, and some of them have decided to stay. So grow up and learn how to engage in real politics instead of this childish sabotage.

Thanks again to all who wrote.

Phil ```

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