[muglo] Re: High Speed Internet

At 11:19 PM -0500 11/12/03, Jim Taylor wrote:

>Mary has a good point Barry. I've been using Uniserve, nee imgainet, for
>some years now and the spam has gone beyond belief. I now get up to 10 to 15
>emails a day and all but one or two is spam, most of it pornographic. It's
>driving me nuts. jim

Hi Jim,

Yeah, Spam volume on the net has increased sharply, even in the last 
three months. And, as legislation making it illegal is being passed 
in various jurisdictions, the Spammers are getting more difficult to 
track down.

The point that I was making to Barry was specifically about the Spam 
problem from the perspective of the ISP. Sympatico has recently said 
that over 50% of their email traffic is Spam, and that is typical for 
a large ISP.

Thing is, Spam does not come at a "steady" rate, it is usually sent 
in "floods" over a short period, and this can overwhelm the mail 
server resources, such that mail service to good customers like 
myself can be disrupted. This is already happening occasionally with 
Sympatico.

Secondly, as ISPs are driven to using more and more "aggressive" 
filtering schemes, it becomes more likely that they will mis-classify 
some of the mail we want to get, as Spam, and we will never see it. 
This also is already happening occasionally with Sympatico. I know 
this because: Sympatico offers me the option of having them filter 
mail addressed to me for Spam, and trashing it before I see it. Or I 
can have it moved to a folder for my inspection. I have several times 
found mail in that folder that is not Spam, not even close.

The good news is that individual computer users have a lot of tools 
at their disposal to protect themselves from the Spam that is not 
blocked or filtered out by their ISP. What email app are you using? 
With a well-configured email app, possibly combined with a 
third-party Spam filter, you should find yourself at least 99% 
Spam-free.

I'd be happy to help, if you like. (I. Hate. Spam. :-)

Mary



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