The "failure report loop problem" is a well known feature of e-mail posting lists such as SCREEN-L. If it may be of some comfort to people on this list, SPSSX-L, to which I also subscribe, has just begun to live another episode of this serial... For what I understand of it, such a loop is created when a posting bounces back at the node to which it was sent before reaching the destination account. The three most common causes for such rejection are "disk quota exceeded" (the system doesn't allow people who use their full disk space to receive additionnal messages), "bad address" (usually a no more good one) or an instruction provided by the end user to reject all e-mail for a while (available in some systems, useful for vacations). The problem is that some mailers send back the posting not to the original sender (v.g. myself sending this message to SCREEN-L) but to the list that redistributed it worldwide. The bounced back message is then redistributed to everyone on the list including, of course, to the address where it has already been rejected and so on. This is how the loops is created. Technically, this means that the mailer sends back to the address written in the "Sender" field of the heading instead of the address written in the "From" field. So, basically, what is wrong is the mailer or some other piece of software performing such a task. And those pieces of software are apparently a common feature in UK: most loops start by a message rejected by some UK node. The only true solution is to correct the software. For reasons I can't understand, it hasn't been done event though the problem is a plague and has been known for years. If I am not mistaken, one simple solution available to the list owner is to limit the permission to use the list for redistribution to people already subscribing to it. Unless mailers start to subscribe themselves to SCREEN-L, whe shouldn't then hear from them anymore. More precisely, the list owner may still receive the junk but at least only once... Since the subscription, review and use can be set public (open) or private independently, it shouldn't cause any problem to future subscribers and wouldn't transfer to the list owner the burden of processing new subscriptions and postings. Let's call that safe sex... It would be advisable though to write in the list heading that one has first to subscribe in order to use the list. Hope this helps. Benoit Laplante INRS/Urbanisation Montreal (Quebec) [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask]