Category: email

Here’s a note to share with all your friends that constantly forward you those lame warnings about exploding cell phones and virus warnings from the Nineties.

THIS IS TRUE.
A friend of my cousin’s wife works for the Internet and said this really works!

A quick search on www.snopes.com can reveal most hoaxes in less than 30 seconds.

Millions of Clueless Now Able
to stop wasting bandwidth forwarding mindless e-mails. Simple web site debunks urban legends, virus warnings and twisted political bullshit. Amazing but true!

Anyone who can download the Internet can go to Snopes.com and type in a few words from the e-mail subject. Somehow the computer will show you whether the yarn is a hoax or the truth. It’s incredible! Experts say do this BEFORE you forward the message to your entire address book.

FORWARD THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!!!!!!

“I have a great spam filter.”
At a recent holiday party I asked a friend about an e-mail I had sent him. He pondered for a moment and shook his head. The above was his response, which perplexed me for a moment.

Did he consider my correspondence spam? Was he being facetious?

I grinned and suggested, “Maybe it’s a little too good?”

This scenario is played out every day across America. Consumer confidence in e-mail is in crisis. Our increasing intolerance for unsolicited commercial e-mail has prompted many to launch a diligent attack on spam. Unfortunately are assault is so vicious it risks taking out e-mail as a viable communication tool in the process. If you rely on electronic mail to distribute information this has most likely made your life unpleasant.

User Unfriendly
The biggest problem is the huge number of Internet users who have no idea what may be blocking legitimate messages. Their Internet Service Provider (ISP) has installed some new software they either know nothing about or can’t figure out. While this is troublesome it can be overcome– simple announcements are a great start. The worst part is the bad reflection it casts on parties who have no control over the situation.

When someone visits your web site or contacts your organization they may request information. Many of these requests are transacted via e-mail. Even if they begin as a contact form or blog message, the end result is often in the form of an e-mail message. But let’s suppose a spam filter prevents your acknowledgement or reply from reaching that visitor. Is his first thought to check his “whitelist” or Bulk folder? Does he rush out and call his ISP? Hell no, he’s pissed at you!

Black List, Gray Area
Another trend that really troubles me is the growing number of ISPs and mail administrators that are using Realtime Black Lists to block mail. The idea is to maintain a list of servers and IP addresses that are known to be exploited by spammers. While this is good in theory, it sucks in practice. The problem is, like the Jackson Five song goes, one bad apple don’t spoil the whole bunch, girl.

Imagine a ne’er-do-well signs up for a Yahoo account and starts blasting out Nigerian spam. He is sending this from Yahoo so his address is most likely going to end with yahoo.com (or something similar). Next a blocking list server sees all this spam being sent and decides to blacklist the yahoo.com domain. See any problem there? Like maybe the millions of legitimate Yahoo Mail users?

Now don’t get me wrong- not all of these blacklist guys are so stupid. But, believe it or not, some of them are! And then an even bigger idiot decides to subscribe to one of these half-baked schemes and implement it on his mail server. So now we have legitimate folks trying to send invoices to customers or proofs to publishers or listings to members or news to subscribers or… whatever, it doesn’t matter because it’s bounced or discarded as spam before it reaches anyone.

The Final Solution
A proper solution to the problem of spam is in the works. It basically involves basic authentication to restore accountability. A treatise from the Email Sender and Provider Coalition offers a detailed explanation of the problem and the solution. This is something anyone who administers an e-mail server should read.

But that doesn’t mean Mr. Average User shouldn’t do your part! The ESPC also offers a great little tool on their web site which allows you to test your own e-mail address to see if it complies with the proposed standards. It’s a simple tool, just send an e-mail to the sample address provided. Give it a minute then click the View Sample button to review the results. If your mail doesn’t pass tell your ISP or network administrator about it. Let them know you’re concerned and you think it’s important to consider improving your e-mail authentication. Suggest they visit this link for more information: www.espcoalition.org