Steve, and Rika and all,

I too get dozens of these same kinds of spams/cons a week. I think they
are indeed getting it from the Conch-L subscriber list.  There are huge
lists of listserves available out there on the web, and these
ill-intentioned people use them to great effect. Listserves are
victimized in many ways, a great pity because they are so useful and so
much fun! Most of them can be reviewed and copied by anyone who
subscribes. This is a great convenience to other legitimate subscribers
who need an email address, but they are also a boon to the dishonest.
(One wonders what kind of person would be foolish enough to fall for
such nonsense, but someone must.)

However, I must explain that Conch-L does not have a list of subscribers
on a website anywhere. There is a list on the main server computer at
UGA, from which our Conch-L messages are sent out, a list of both the
subscribers who are hidden and those who are not. When someone requests
to review the list, he gets that complete list emailed to him, minus the
hidden addresses. But it is NOT on a website anywhere.

If you hide your email address on the list, that will take you off
future gleanings of our list by e-con artists, but it will not remove
you from the jillions of such lists already in existence and circulating
everywhere. Changing your email address is all I know that will take
care of that problem.

However, I just heard from a friend who is using a filter to exclude
most of these messages. This person uses a filter with certain
objectionable words (like the name of the countries in this case)
plugged into it. That way, any message containing that word or words is
filtered out. We could all try that if our email program will support
filters. I don't think they are too hard to set up. I seem to have been
receiving them for 6 months or more and they are all alike in many ways,
although the wording and approach differ in small ways so surely we can
find a good set of filter words. But be careful what you use...you might
screen out messages you wish to receive...as did my friend...in my email
I told her of my annoyance at these eternal, infernal spams. And I used
the name of a country from which many of these messages originate. The
filter was set on this country name and filtered my message out. My
friend caught it  presumably because my note was expected and didn't
arrive.

Lynn Scheu
Co-owner, Conch-L
Louisville, KY
Stephen Browning wrote: