FFS

I signed up for one of the many 'events in New York' email lists when I arrived here a few weeks ago. Yesterday, someone sent out a message to the list containing a virus. It happens occassionally, SpamCop picked it up an quarantined it on my machine, so that doesn't bother me too much. What really annoys me though is that the reply-to address for the email list is not an admin account, but is actually the list itself. Added to which, it let's anyone mail to the list.

So, after the virus was detected by various mail servers and clients around the world, several of them sent an autoreply to the reply-to address 'warning' the sender that there was a virus. Of course, all these warning messages were sent out to the entire list as well! Then, some of these list members start getting pissed off because not only have they received a virus, but they're also getting all of these warning messages. So what do they do? They reply to the original message asking to be removed from the list!! ... so now I'm receiving messages every couple of minutes or so from people requesting to be taken off the list.

Of course, no other options are provided for how to get off the list. There's no tagline on the messages, no link to a website to unsubscribe, nothing. Eventually, they (the list administrators) will figure it out, but as one of the list members said, they probably don't even know yet - they're probably lazing around reading the Sunday New York Times.