Re: [CH] email

Charles P Demas (cpd@world.std.com)
Sun, 16 Jan 2000 18:31:50 -0500 (EST) 

On Sun, 16 Jan 2000, Doug Irvine wrote:

> My apologies for using the list for this message, however it appears
> that there are ISP's in the USA who are refusing any email from any
> @home.com internet users. Saturday January 15, Calvin Donaghey and I
> attempted an email correspondence, and his server refused the mail and
> bounced my mail back to me. It behooves every @Home internet user to
> complain and complain loudly and long about the reasons for this....I
> may have to switch servers again, if this is not rectified. I know that
> there are an increasing number of list members using cable internet, so
> this is the reason for this message. Mike, I trust that this message
> does not give offense, but now I know of no other way to inform my
> friends of the reason for mail to me, and others, bouncing. Cheers,Doug
> in BC

Recently @HOME has been threatened with a UDP (Usenet Death Penalty) 
because of the large volume of spam posted to Usenet, often theough
open servers operated by @HOME customers.  Many ISPs are not accepting
any Usenet posts from @HOME because of these spams.

The UDP is for NNTP servers, but just as there are open NNTP servers
feeding spam to Usenet, there are also open SMTP servers that are being
hijacked by spammers.  The SMTP is email related.

@HOME is presently trying to cut down on the open server problem, but some
damage has been done to @HOME's reputation, and that damage may have 
caused some ISPs to refuse all traffic from @HOME customers until @HOME
becomes a better Internet neighbor and kicks spammers off their systems.

Many sites may use the RBL (Real-time Blackhole List) to identify
spam sites, and @HOME may have been placed on that list because of 
email spam originating from the home.com domain.

It's unfortunate, but @HOME customers should talk to their customer
support to get them to get such situations corrected.

In the meantime, I suggest that anyone having such problems get a 
free email account at some place like hotmail, juno, or any of the other
free email suppliers, or one of the other places that will allow
free email.

Those that know how to use Unix shell accounts can get free shell accounts
at places like www.freeshell.org, and can use them to send email after
telneting in and loging into an account there.

I recognize that this whole topic is off topic to this list, but I'm 
answering this to the list in an effort to minimize the responses 
to Doug's post and to help those other @HOME subscribers.

FWIW, I think that the UDP scheduled to start Jan 19 will probably 
be avoided as @HOME has responded to the warning and taken steps to 
fix their spam problems.

If there are questions about the UDP, there has been lots of discussion of
it in the news.admin.net-abuse.usenet newsgroup.  Posting questions there
after reading the threads there is preferable (IMO) to any discussion of
it here.


Chuck Demas
Needham, Mass.

  Eat Healthy    |   _ _   | Nothing would be done at all,
  Stay Fit       |   @ @   | If a man waited to do it so well,
  Die Anyway     |    v    | That no one could find fault with it.
  demas@tiac.net |  \___/  | http://www.tiac.net/users/demas