Spam on CCL and my appeal for your help

Dear CCL Subscribers...
 Some of you may have noticed that I was out of the country for over 3 weeks.
 But of course, my "caring eye" {:-)} was with CCL most of the time
 whenever
 I could plug myself into some "wire".
 Few appeals, warnings, etc...
 We fight spam diligently, but it is not an easy fight. CCL is on any possible
 spammers list in the world, and we get at times a 1000 spam messages a day.
 Price of fame and glory {:-)}. Of course you do not see it much...
 But it is a constant struggle... Spammers devise more sophisticated exploits,
 and we counter them... It takes resources... Please read on, and at the end,
 I will tell you what to do, in case when your legitimate message is being
 bounced back from CCL.
 But now, an APPEAL FOR HELP... Our funding from federal and state sources
 reflects a well known trend. Our costs and resources usage are up, while our
 support is down. The long term outlook does not look good, either, and
 it would be a pity, if CCL had to go after so many years of fruitful
 operation. But I am very positive that you will help, and we can prove to
 our parent organization that we are an important asset. OSC is very generous
 and provides us with high-bandwidth Internet connection, IP address space,
 office space, technical support, etc., etc., at no cost, but expect as to
 cover at least some of personnel and hardware costs. PLEASE HELP NOW!!!
 You can help in a number of ways:
   1) Give us a DONATION (tax deductible in US and many other countries).
      Small donations are welcome! We will gladly take many $20 donations.
      Make check to "OSC Development Fund (CCL)" and send check to me:
      Jan Labanowski, OSC, 1224 Kinnear Rd, Columbus, OH 43212-1163, USA
      We will add you to the CCL Sponsors Page at:
          http://www.ccl.net/cgi-bin/donors
      You can also do a bank transfer, or FAX us a simple Credit Card
      form to: 614-688-3998 (secure FAX in OSC Business office).
        Donation  for CCL in the amount of:.................... US Dollars
        Card: Visa/MC    Your Name:
        Your Address:  [We need it to send you the a Thank you letter for
                       Tax Purposes, since your donation may be TAX Deductible]
        Card Number:                         Expiration Month/Year:
        Signature:
      You will get a letter confirming your donation for tax purposes.
      For bigger (1000 USD or more) donations we will put your logo and link on
      the CCL page of your choice as our way of saying Thank You!!!
      If you need a supporting letter from CCL, or more details,
      do not hesitate to contact Jan Labanowski at jkl ( ( at ) ) ccl.net.
   2) PURCHASE THE CCL ARCHIVES from us. You will have a set of 4 CDs which
      contain all files, software, and messages from CCL archive. They can
      be easily searched with grep or whatever. They are $250 for a set.
      You can also purchase multiple sets. We offer a regular billing
      procedure, so you can pay from your grant or other institutional
      funds by PO, check, credit card, wire, etc.  Details can be found at:
             http://www.ccl.net/chemistry/aboutccl/supporting/services
   3) ADVERTISE YOUR JOB OPPORTUNITIES with us, and if you are successful,
      please send us $100. We are being praised for capturing attention of
      selective audience which uses computers in chemistry, life sciences,
      and materials design. We are told that we bring more CVs than ads
      in traditional trade publications at a fraction of the cost.
      Paying for our service is voluntary and on honor basis. Pay if you can.
      More details:
          http://www.ccl.net/jobs
 Now... More about the spam defenses... We use several layers. Basically,
 we collect spam messages and then extract IP addresses of spammers from the
 headers with scripts. Then, we block the subnets with 3 first octets of the
 spammer. Our latest spammers list is available at:
    http://www.ccl.net/spammers.txt
 (we cannot advertize it for legal purposes, but you are a member).
 Check, if your mail gateway is there by any chance Yes, we know,
 it is radical, and innocent blood is being spilled. If some hackers
 invaded one of your departmental computers, and spammed us, your
 innocent computer will be blocked. If your message bounces as: "Access
 denied"
 it means that your computer was blacklisted as a spam generator.
 Send the copy of your mail to jkl ( ( at ) ) ccl.net, and I will usually remove
 your
 computer from the black list, and resend your message to CCL. Please do not
 hesitate to do this... We really want your messages appear on CCL, and we
 are here to help. At the same time, imagine what would happen if the spam
 was appearing on CCL. This is a painful compromise... Sorry...
 The blacklisting of IP addresses is the reactive measure (we had to be spammed
 first to add it to a blacklist). We also use the pro-active measures. Our
 distribution script checks a large dictionary of words commonly found in
 spam messages. We also check the consistency of e-mail header lines. Note,
 we do not check if message comes from a subscriber of CCL. We get many
 subscriptions from people which we suspect are prospective spammers.
 We do not have resources to do "background checks" and have a policy
 to
 sign up everyone, THOUGH WE PREFER THAT YOU SEND US YOUR SUBSCRIPTION FROM
 AN INSTITUTIONAL ADDRESS.
 Sometimes legitimate messages are being stopped since they contain words
 which may imply spam (e.g., sex vs. spin sextet state). The messages rejected
 this way are reviewed, usually at least once a day, and resent if found
 legitimate. Unfortunately, the students working for CCL are not computational
 chemists, and are asked to act with "extreme prejudice". If your
 message
 does not appear on CCL within two days, please bug me directly:
 jkl ( ( at ) ) ccl.net (send me an original message) and I will resent it.
 There are also many other tests which are done on the messages (e.g., for
 possible viruses, and hidden junk in attachments). It is constant fight
 to get ahead of the latest devices of evil forces of the Internet. We hope
 that this is working for the common good, and that our effort is worth it.
 We would hate to send a single message with a malicious virus and infect
 a few thousands computers with a single mistake. You can help us a lot
 by sending plain text, unencoded mail, with no attachments. In most cases
 this is what you really want.
 Please understand that when your message is stopped or bounced, it is nothing
 personal. We try to do our best and defend the CCL against malice, naivete
 (e.g., those poor kids hoping to earn millions on spamming people with
 junk mail which nobody reads), oversight, and irresponsibility of some
 Internet users. When we review messages, the address of the from line
 is our list consideration, as it is easily forged.
 Some final advice... If you get a spam message, and it says: send request
 to UNSUBSCRIBE from our service, do not send any requests. They just want
 a confirmation that your address is valid, and that you received their junk
 mail. Also, do not open any attachments when you are not ABSOLUTELY SURE
 that they are safe. Do not always trust the originator e-mail address.
 People ask me often while that get the e-mail from jkl ( ( at ) ) ccl.net which
 advertises "teen site". It did not come from me... Someone forged mail
 headers and used my address hoping that you will recognize it and open the
 message. To really see where your message is coming from, you need to look
 at the top Received: line of the header of your message. While it is easy
 to do under UNIX with most mail readers, the MS products will usually not
 allow you to easily look at headers (they want to keep it EASY -- but the
 problem is that it AIN'T EASY).
 Thank you for your attention and help...
 Jan Labanowski, jkl ( ( at ) ) ccl.net
 The CCL Keeper...
 Jan K. Labanowski            |    phone: 614-292-9279,  FAX: 614-292-7168
 Ohio Supercomputer Center    |    E-mail: jkl ( ( at ) ) ccl.net
 1224 Kinnear Rd,             |    http://www.ccl.net/~jkl
 Columbus, OH 43212-1163      |    http://www.ccl.net/    http://asdn.net/