Autonerdz forums

We have posted many times here in different areas about the spreading practice by Internet Service Providers handling email to install spam filtering beyond the reach of their clients.

Spam is insidious, but the cure has proven worse than the disease.  Now it has reached the point that this 'cure' has rendered the entire email system unreliable. 

This is because there is no such thing as a spam filter that works.  ALL spam filters catch a percentage of mails that are legitimate, even important, while missing much of the spam they are designed to eliminate.

So, if you email anyone, be sure the intended receiver has another way to contact you because you have no way of knowing if their reply can reach you or if yours will reach them.

Just because you have exchanged email with someone before is no assurance that you will tomorrow.  The mails that are blocked change every day.

Only when customers demand that they be in control of what they will be allowed to read will this practice be ended.  So, tell your ISP that you demand that all of your mail be available somewhere for you to see, so you can pick out the emails from your spam folder that are important to you.

The reason for this post is that most people do not know they are paying someone to do this to them.  After all, you are not likely to know about things you never receive.  They will often deny that they are censoring your mail beyond your reach but most now do.

This has become very frustrating for people like me that depend on being able to communicate through email.  Now I have to attempt to call everyone that I email just to see if they got it.    

Ridiculous.   

I can't always do that.

So, if you email me for any reason and do not receive a reply it is not because I didn't sent you one.  More likely, you didn't include a phone number or any other method for me to reach you.   Dead end.  I often do not know that mail was blocked from you either.  Try calling me if you didn't receive a reply.

Bottom line... email used to be very reliable, now it is more like a message in a bottle.

Everyone should speak with their $$ and put an end to this abuse.

OK that's my rant for today   

Fisher,

This was written in 2004:

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=17300016

It's gotten a lot worse since then.  Lately I have noticed many more services using server mail blocking that used to be reliable..MSN, Hotmail, Comcast, Yahoo,  etc....  The cancer is spreading.

The cure is public awareness and action to reject services that engage in this practice.

Kevin,

I'm sure I am.  I get blacklisted at random like so many other people.  All it takes is for your email address to get harvested once and used as a cloak for a spammer. 

This is one of the many reasons that sever level spam filters and blacklisting create so many problems.  All it takes is for some computer in the world that has your email in an address book to be compromised by a trojan virus.  Or have your email visible on any web site on the planet that a harvester bot can snag.  This is one of the reasons we use such high security on these forums so that all members addresses are secure. 

I have recently again been receiving spam from myself for various pharmaceuticals.  Not the first time.... 

A lot of innocent people are caught up in this overzealous and futile effort to combat spam with blacklists.

The only way to combat spam is to have a program running locally on your own machine or on a server that filters spam into a folder for your review without ever deleting anything.  The one I use is kind of an artificial intelligence that learns over time what is spam and what is not.  I have had it for some time now and it has become about 95% accurate but still misses an important communication once in a while.  But it learns from its mistakes and becomes better all the time.  Spam just isn't a problem.

Fisher,

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As you now know, your Hotmail is blocking mail from you, preventing it from even reaching your junkmail folder.  It is blocking my mail and who knows how many others.  I did get some non delivery messages which I forwarded to you to show you that your mail is censored.  I had to send them in a sneaky way to get them through the block. 

Here is part of the message:

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Unfortunately, with Hotmail and many pay services, calling your service provider is not any help.  They will usually deny that they are doing this to you.  Refusing to admit that there is a problem is the problem.  They are doing it, know they are doing it, and can stop doing it at any time.