Yahoo Group Owners: Sick Of Spam?

I'm a Yahoo Group owner like yourself. I'm sick and tired of seeing known spammers signing up for my groups, then seeing the inevitable confirming spam message being posted by said member. Thus, I've created spam controls for Yahoo Groups, until such time as Yahoo starts instituting decent spam controls of their own. All they'd have to do is go through their membership base and start deleting certain members. There's definitely a pattern. I'm very disappointed that, after many months of this, they (a multi billion dollar corporation) still have yet to figure this out. A six year old could figure it out. My cat could figure it out. Programming geniuses they undoubtedly are not.

I'll start with a no doubt very incomplete list of known Yahoo Group spammers, names which follow a certain rule: all hyphenated, all used for spam. Please note that the names are what remain constant here, while there are usually different numbers at the end (normally a random three-digit number, for example: nuala-alexander123@.whatever-stupid-domain-name-they-choose.com).
The domain names are always completely different, although there seem to be only a handful of messages: a penis enlargement scam, a home improvement/mortgage scam, etc. (Note: I may be wrong about that, as I never waste my time reading through them, so the spammers' time and purpose is entirely wasted on me. This is only what I've noticed momentarily as a result of receiving a bunch of spam messages to moderate.) This particular list of names has been culled from my own groups and several others to which I belong:

alexis-sabry
belle-gobble
erika-haven
domenique-mcnally
dorie-chabot
josalyne-overfelt
junelle-coyne
lily-gannaway
maneisha-mccarthy
muriel-berggren
nuala-alexander
savanna-terk
sherry-heath
steelie-mcmath
teisha-reifel

Don't bother thinking banning these members is going to deter anyone from using the same name. A few days after a "muriel-berggren" tried to spam one of my lists and was subsequently banned, a new "muriel-berggren" with a different three-digit number and a totally different domain name joined the list and subsequently sent in four spams in a row. Yes, s/he was banned, too.

In addition, I've developed two useful tools, which you are free to use at your own discretion. The first is for group owners who decide to restrict memberships, so they can go in and reject potential spammers before an attempt to spam is made. I put this notice on the home page of ALL of my restricted membership groups:

NOTICE: Although this group is now fully moderated to deter spam, due to the increasing number of spammers who are joining this group, all potential members must fill out the standard restricted membership form through Yahoo. Any known spammers will automatically have their memberships rejected via this process.

(As you can tell, my groups have been fully moderated for some time now.)

If you don't want to restrict your group membership (for instance, if you don't have time to go searching through each new membership request), I do suggest fully or partially moderating your group if it gets spammed regularly. Yahoo does have an option to moderate members for a certain amount of time.

Here are the contents of a file I use, which you can also edit at your own discretion. I call it BannedSpammer.txt, and it can be used for the purpose of sending to all spammers whom you ban from your group. When you create this file, all you have to do is choose to create a text file, then check the option that allows you to send it to a member upon being banned:

YOU HAVE RECEIVED THIS MESSAGE BECAUSE YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO SPAM THIS FULLY MODERATED YAHOO GROUP OR BECAUSE YOUR CHOSEN MEMBERSHIP NAME FOR THIS GROUP HAS BEEN FOUND ON A LIST OF KNOWN SPAMMER NAMES. SPAM IS ABSOLUTELY NOT TOLERATED. YOU HAVE NOW BEEN PERMANENTLY BANNED. THIS DECISION IS FINAL AND IRREVOCABLE. THERE IS NO APPEAL PROCESS.

Note the solid caps, which indicate shouting. While I doubt any of these spammers use a valid email address, it felt so much better to me when I put the message in solid caps. Hey, I put up with their spam, let them put up with my shouting.

I hope this information is helpful.

"Rocky"