Spam filters, front and center

Communications News, July, 2004 by Jerry Goerz, Tim Ayers, Ed Messerly, Marty Shindler

I'm responding to your excellent editorial about antispam bottlenecks in the May ComNews. That sure hit a nerve!

I e-mail news and meeting announcements to about 360 members of the IEEE Lexington, Ky., section. I can't do it from home anymore. AOL now restricts me to a variable low address limit (20 or so) for each e-mail. Sending more violates their revised terms of service, and I they shut the sender down until you call and get special permission, which eventually expires. So I have to send them from work.

I would not be sending those meeting announcements at all, if the new chairperson could send them from his office. Lexmark limits him to about 20 addresses for each e-mail.

Like you, I delete addresses that cannot receive my e-mails anymore. My announcements sometimes contain attachments, such as road maps to the meeting locations. If an IEEE member cannot receive attachments, they get deleted from my list.

We mail postcards to members who have no e-mail. A surprising number of electrical engineers have no computers or minimal ISPs.

Some people in my church have simply given up on computers and e-mail. Viruses and obscene spam shut them down. They don't have the skills to install firewalls, update antivirus software, or download Microsoft Windows patches. The upside is, they don't get asked to run any committees anymore!

--Jerry Goerz

East Kentucky Power Cooperative

Winchester, Ky.

Thanks for the editorial. It was right on the money. I have a communications firm focused on telecom. We pride ourselves on the lists we develop. We don't shotgun news releases; we only send to the specific writers and editors who will possibly cover our clients. We follow all good antispam etiquette regarding return addresses, contact information, unsubscribe procedures and listing Web sites.

Now, however, we not only have spam hell, we also have filter hell. In the last few months, I've come to the conclusion that the solution for both problems is paying for e-mail. Heretical as it sounds, I'll happily pay a penny to send an e-mail and only accept e-mail from those who are willing to spend a penny to reach me. Revenue from such a system would easily pay for a nationwide buildout of broadband to every home, school and business.

Again, thanks for raising the filter issue with your readers.

Tim Ayers

Ayers Associates, LLC

Washington

We get in excess of 40,000 spam e-mails a day, including all kinds of junk from magazines like yours. I think the editorial was way off base. Target your e-mail and send to people who know you and the success rate will be high. If you sent an e-mail to me, I am glad it didn't get through.

--Ed Messerly

Opened my copy of Communications News the other eve and was drawn to the "Filter Foibles" editorial. The circumstances you described have been happening to me for a few weeks. Discussions with the company that hosts my e-mail, godaddy.com, and my ISP, Adelphia, were painful and full of finger pointing.

I had a few e-mails bounce to people with whom I had an ongoing e-mail exchange. It was frustrating. Sometimes, I could clear it by using an alternative address, but in the end, it still went through the same outgoing server. Other times, using my Web-based e-mail resolved it, but then that does not have my address book, etc.

One place to check when there is a problem is mail-abuse.org.

I wanted to send your article as a page embedded in an e-mail, but your system does not allow it. Too bad; there are others that would find it revealing, as well.

--Marty Shindler

The Shindler Perspective

Calabasas, Calif.