Re: Spamming over this list

Ginger Claassen wrote:

> I am wondering now what kind of deals the W3C is operating here? I have 
> not been aware of the fact that by subscribing to this list I would also 
> subscribe to a whole bunch of other mailinglists in which I do not hold 
> interest?

The email that you mentioned didn't reach me, which either means that it 
wasn't posted to the W3C mailing list, or it was taken out by an ISP 
spam filter.

Without seeing its full headers, it is difficult to say what has 
actually happened, but the response you got suggests to me that the 
person who analysed the posting believes that it was actually posted on 
the W3C list.

It does seem that academic lists, and the W3C ones are effectively that, 
do consider relevant conference announcements as on topic, although, 
personally I find them irritating.  Also academic conference organisers 
are not that fussy about which lists they post to, so once they have 
posted one on topic announcement, they seem likely to post off topic ones.

The next possibility is that your name has been trawled because you have 
posted to the list in the past, but I think that the specific 
identification of this list suggests that you actually received it on 
the list.

Incidentally, my impression is that university administration/commercial 
departments are rather naive about the internet and will outsource mail 
shots to rather disreputible companies.  I've had a recruiting shot from 
a red brick that was clearly outsourced in that way, and London 
Metropolitan is, I think, one of the most recent generation of universities.

I think you can discount any possibility that your address has been sold.

> 
> I would appreciate if the administrators of this list could ellaborate 
> on this matter.

You need to look at the help that came, when you subscribed (or look at 
the links in the email headers) to find the correct process of 
contacting an administrator.  Administrators don't read all the lists on 
a regular basis.


-- 
David Woolley
Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam,
that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work.

Received on Monday, 18 March 2013 12:40:25 UTC