(cba:news) CBA e-mail lists, important news and changes

[Jonathan Kemp]

Hi CBAers,

Apologies for the recent spam redistributed through our lists.

After testing several varieties of e-mail filtering software the past few
weeks since upgrading the CBA web and mail server, I am now implementing
one such software package immediately.  List addresses are also changing
as follows, effective immediately.  Please note the new list names and
change your e-mail address books as appropriate.

  old list                           new list
  ---------------------------------  -------------------------------------
  news at cbastro.org      cba-news at cbastro.org
  data at cbastro.org      cba-data at cbastro.org
  data-old at cbastro.org  cba-data-old at cbastro.org
  info at cbastro.org      cba-info at cbastro.org

Now, for some more detail for those who are interested.

Our lists have become the target of spam a bit more lately, as I'm sure
you've noticed.  I believe that this is most likely because of
cross-postings among various astronomy news lists and the eventual
publication of our list names on the web.

I was in New York a few weeks ago to setup and commission a new world wide
web and e-mail server for the CBA, and also to setup a backup server.  At
that time, I also started testing various mailing list management software
packages to help cut out the spam which was becoming uncomfortably more
common.  With the barrage of spam yesterday and today, I have now
implemented some mailing list management software and the news list should
once again have substantially more signal then noise.  And, as an added
precaution to make sure that the server doesn't get overloaded with the
processing of additional unwanted spam e-mail, I have changed the usual
list addresses as noted in the table above.

Also, return receipts will no longer be issues for e-mails.  You should
get a copy yourself of e-mails sent to the new news list.  Also, with the
new server in place, some of you may have noticed that the listing of
recently submitted data sets is now updating every 15 minutes instead of
every hour.

Again, thanks for your patience.  And, please let me know if you have any
questions or comments.

Cheers,

Jonathan
CBA Hilo