Are you one of the 24,997 others? (4 May 1999) You may well have received an email from a CUT member which begins: If you receive this message then your email address is stored on my computer. This message is being sent out to about 25,000 potential email addresses from my email archives. I apologise in advance if this message is of no interest to you - this is a 'spam', but not the bad variety that most of us know about, rather it may be the first useful spam you've had. :-) I (Alastair) got three copies: there are presumably another 24,997 floating around. Our member, for some inscrutable reason, had been collecting email addresses over the years, building up a list of 75,000, then decided that the European Telecommunications Boycott was such a good idea everyone in that list had to know about it. So he removed the duplicates and obvious duds, leaving 25,000 email addresses, then proclaimed the glad tidings to each one. He was obviously honest and sincere in what he was trying to do, and he did state in the email, as per the Rules for Members, that he is a member - not a Committee member, which would have given the email 'official' status. But the act of sending out the email was not endorsed by the Committee. The first we knew of it was when it landed in our Inboxes: The Register soon picked up on it. We discussed the whole issue at our committee meeting on 11 May and decided to take no action; our member had apologised and, as far as we were concerned, that was that. I do suggest that, if you want to do something big to publicise the Boycott, please contact us first. And, as it turns out, there are now thirteen countries involved in the Boycott: the Czech Republic has just declared its support.