Since hackers and wannabes probably read INFOSEC publications with more zeal than do INFOSEC practitioners, I'd say we're likely to be in for even more of the "I don't want to be on this list" sorts of traffic.
the mailing list infrastructure of cyberspace is at an incredibly immature stage of development imho, and this is a good example of its lack of refinement. there is wide open room for improvement and a lot of demand as well imho. one possible short-term solution is to do the following: have the mailing list send a secret password to the subscription address before starting the list. the person replies with the secret password to confirm they wanted the subscription. it's a tedious two-stage process, but in some cases it may be appropriate. as far as long-term solutions go, I'd like to see some serious thought about the following problems: 1. how do people avoid getting mail from entities they don't want, but at the same time get mail from entities they do. note this problem is far larger than that of mere mailing lists. 2. how can good cyberspatial forums be constructed that are bulletproof against pranks. 3. how can these forums be integrated with future software such as Netscape to give a good interface to the user. I think there is room for an enterprising cyberspace company to work on these problems and make a lot of money for succeeding. for example, imagine a system similar to Yahoo that catalogs the massive amounts of email mailing lists out there. "been done"? no, sorry, I don't think so. there is a list by DeSilva or someone that is pretty good, but I think only scratches the surface of public mailing lists. a yahoo-like indexing system merely for "cyberspace mailing lists" I think might be a profitable endeavor to pursue. another neat thing would be to have a "mailing list manager" built into software. instead of this ridiculous concept of people hand-typing and sending commands to listservers (all of which have different syntaxes and behavior etc.) I would like to see a "mailing list standard". a standard way that a mailing list operates (as far as dealing with headers, errors, subscribing, unsubscribing, etc.). then I would like to see a gui interface that handles all the options. you just see a group somewhere and a button that you press to "subscribe". the software would automatically separate your mailing list traffic into separate folders. it would keep track of what lists you are on, and all you would have to do is look at that list and hit an "unsubscribe" button corresponding to a group you are currently in, whenever you wanted to. I really think that the above capabilities are going to prove very valuable in the future and are the logical next step in "civilizing cyberspace" after the web and netscape have overtaken the planet. if I get some positive feedback from this message that others are interested, I might go to the trouble to write up some preliminary ideas on a standard. it really bugs me that this area hasn't been standardized by this point, nor does there seem to be any activity by any groups towards doing so.