[Trombone-l] Trombone-L Privacy

[Danner, Mearl]

Just a note to assure members that we are doing all we can to protect
members' privacy.

The list membership of trombone-l is available only to administrators.
For now that is only myself.

The addresses could conceivably be gleaned from the archives, which are
public, but the addresses are obscured by replacing the "@" in the
address with " at " - making it extremely difficult to extract the
addresses programmatically. Spammers generally look for easier targets.

The institution that houses the list, Samford University, does not sell
or distribute list memberships to anyone.

Over 90 per cent of the email that reaches our gateway is rejected
immediately as spam. 80 per cent of the remainder is quarantined as
possible spam for review by our users. That only leaves 2 percent as
valid email.

The vast majority of the spam that is rejected is from personal
computers that have been compromised by viruses and other malware. These
computers can be used to establish networks with other compromised
computers. They share address books and other info that can be used to
spam/scam innocent users. The owners of these computers are usually
unaware that this activity is going on.

Keep your virus definitions updated. Employ some program (Spybot-S&D! as
an example, not a recommendation) to block web content from installing
unwanted programs on your computer.

Unless you plan to send email to list members off-line only put the
trombone-l address in your address books.

Every technology we employ is, at best, one step behind the spammers.

Thanks

Mearl Danner
List Owner - Trombone-L