-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Wednesday 21 July 2004 01:50 pm, Jonathan Gardner wrote:

On Wednesday 21 July 2004 01:38 pm, Jonathan Gardner wrote:

...

I've heard that someone or something (maybe us!) are harvesting email addresses on this list and sending email to them from our legitimate servers. (See http://spf.pobox.com and try host -t txt amazon.com)

I'm hoping they'll bite and send me one as well.

It bit, and the problem is being solved. Thanks for your cooperation and understanding.

Some people expressed an interest in why it was doing this. As near as we can tell, there are some addresses subscribed to this list that should not be - like webmaster@amazon.co.uk. When an email goes to these kinds of addresses, we send an automated reply - "Please don't send email to this address. Try one of these instead." The reason for this is in the earlier days, a great deal of spam was sent to generic addresses. We found that by sending this response, and having legitimate customers send to one of those addresses, it reduced the volume of spam significantly. I know a lot of people don't like this. Most of us don't either. But we are a dinosaur in many ways, and we are evolving, although a bit slower than we did in the earlier days. Eventually, we will get a system in place to stop this. Anyways, when you send an email to the list, it naturally goes to all the subscribers. Since one of those subscribers sends an automated reply to email sent to it, you get that reply. - -- Jonathan M. Gardner Mass Mail Systems Developer, Amazon.com jonagard@amazon.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFA/tzjBFeYcclU5Q0RAvl6AJwL9pNJOgvDGI1tyYq5QMfxjNHJ1gCgyuVC T3c07DvtEXexKXrB5aRHzLw= =W8At -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday 22 July 2004 05:49 am, Ralph Seichter wrote:

Jonathan Gardner wrote:

...

Anyways, when you send an email to the list, it naturally goes to all the subscribers. Since one of those subscribers sends an automated reply to email sent to it, you get that reply.

I think most people here understood why the auto-replies were sent. The thing is that it is your task to configure your auto-reply mechanism to exclude mailing lists, not our task to absolve your mailer for annoying all human list subscribers. ;-)

I wasn't asking for forgiveness. We were at fault, and I can't deny that. I am just giving you all a heads-up on what is happening and what I am doing to fix it. I am trying to cooperate with the list administrators so that I can track down which email address is subscribed. Obviously, I can't unsubscribe with traditional methods because it sends an email to the address. - -- Jonathan M. Gardner Mass Mail Systems Developer, Amazon.com jonagard@amazon.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFA/+qzBFeYcclU5Q0RAu6PAKCjg29wiJub2KT/UXWj1QJLQevkpACfR1XR cjmP4vz1YbUg+DsZwJelkpg= =NMog -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----