Vince Fuller writes:

Has anyone else received this? Is it legit or is it yet another dishonest attempt by spammers to improve the quality of their mailing lists? I very much suspect the former as I doubt that spammers pay much attention to "remove" lists.

Seems to me that the spammers might hage caught on to the "GOOD TIMES" vehicle of e-mail distribution. It's easier and more effective to get users to spam each other than it is to spam the users directly. Firstly, it gets through most filtering schemes (except for body-content filtering). Secondly it would get better readership, since it ends up with a "friends" e-mail address in the "From:" header, and thirdly, it is cheap. Social Engineering attacks at their ugliest. My guess is (and I have no substantiation for this at all), is that they are going to compile a great big list of users from the replies to the "REMOVE" list, and then try to sell it to every spammer who's mail is forwarded to the "Blacklist". Of course, this particular effort may be legitimate, but it would be an interesting next step for the spammers. [ let's move this to spam-list@psc.edu ] -SteveK

Dear Sir/Madam,

Your email address is on many spammers' lists. That is why you received so much junk email lately.

Most of the spammers will stop sending you junk email if you ask them to remove your email address from their lists.

But the problem is that there are too many spammers. The spammers are not supposed to send you junk email in the first place. Why do you even have to spend your time to reply?

We are compiling a REMOVE list. It is much faster for the spammers to remove your email address if we send them the list because most of the spammers use automated software.

To add your name to the REMOVE list, simply reply to this email. You do not have to write anything. It is FREE!

We are also compiling a blacklist of spammers. If you receive junk email from someone, please forward the original message to list@netchem.com.

Please do not use spammers to advertise your product on the Internet. It is not easy to send out 1 million email. The spammer will take your money and disappear.

To avoid further spamming, we send out this message only to limited number of users. Please forward this email to your friends if you think it is useful to them.

------------------------------------------------- Jerry Wang, PhD, Chemechanics, Inc. http://www.netchem.com, mailto:jerryw@netchem.com -------------------------------------------------

-- Steve Kann i/o 360 digital design 841 Broadway, Suite 502 PGP 1024/C0145E05 F2 D6 24 83 9E 52 9A 61 AA BB 97 61 5C A1 B8 CE Personal:stevek@SteveK.COM Business: stevek@io360.com