Welp....

[Simon Bowring]

>Hey,  I don't see the problem.  
Then let me assist!

>I suspect that this mailing list would be a very poor choice for spammers 
to harvest.  

Spammers don't "choose" where they harvest addresses from, they 
buy lists of addresses or run automated software to generate
such lists by looking for anything that smells a bit like
an email address from the web and usenet.  More or less anything 
they find that looks like an email address may get harvested!

>If they spammed this group, their email account would probably be pulled
>in minutes.  This does not seem to be a group that would take
>spam lightly.

Mostly they're very good at "hiding" - they often use temporary or
hijacked email accounts to send from, making tracing that way 
impossible, wosrt case scenario is that send an angry email to 
some poor sod who had the audacity to have his account hijacked
(which is one reason why all spam complaints should start with a 
polite apology if its reached the wrong person_!  

The only *reliable* way to trace spammers is to "follow the money"!

Spammers have to give a valid postal address, phone number, email 
address or URL for the responding morons to use (99% probability
that any email addresses in the header will be forged), however 
they often use an anonymous PO box or automated telephone response 
system at the other end, making them hard to trace that way too, 
but if you can get a valid registered company name (some of them 
aren't real companies), then you can probably trace them.

If they specify a valid URL, or email address, you can often
find their internet registration details via an internic whois 
search, which can often (but not always) lead you to their ISP,
and bingo you can fire one off to abuse@<their_isp> !

I complain about quite a lot of spam that falls into the last 
category, but life's too short to worry about it all!

Simon Bowring