A Word About Spam
And What You Can Do To Help
by Brad Ryder - Saturday, April 12, 2008
Although I've said "I will never give up my fight against spam" ... I am about to give up my fight against spam. Or at least withdraw to neutral territory and take stock of my resources.
It is a battle that, although I do NOT "choose to lose," has become exhausting. Our email service generates minimal revenue for WebRyders*, or any Internet provider, but it is where I spend most of my time -- and accounts for quite a lot of my cash outflow. Big companies such as Google and Yahoo can afford to pay people to create sophisticated spam filters, but WebRyders, being small, must rely on third party solutions such as Postini and Katharion ... and I need to start relying on my customers to help me and to help yourselves.
*Most of our revenue comes from hosting web sites and providing dialup and DSL connectivity.
Of course any spam filter is going to have its weaknesses. Recently I switched webryders.net and a few other domains to a service called Katharion, not to save money but because Postini has been unresponsive since they got bought by Google. While Katharion is probably slightly better than Postini, and some customers report a better experience, some are saying they are getting more spam.
If you are getting more spam, or any spam for that matter, here are some reasons why:
1. At about the same time that I switched to Katharion, I also eliminated my internal mail rules. Since Postini wasn't stopping all the spam, I had to add this secondary layer, but it turned out that I was stopping email from someone's sister in France, or a daughter in Malaysia, or a major customer in Sweden. Yes, Postini blocked legitimate email, too, but at least you could look in your quarantined mail and find it. With my secondary filtering, the message just went poof.
So I have stopped blocking email based on IP range, at least for now, hoping maybe Katharion will do better at stopping spam at the primary layer.
If you want to be an active participate in the battle against spam, here's how you can help. When you receive spam, look at the full header.** If the first line is something like:
Received: from k080.smtproutes.com [208.70.89.180] by webryders.net
... you can tell by the "smtproutes" and the IP address starting with 208.70.89 that the email went through Katharion. Forward the email, with the header, to spam@katharion.com. Please don't forward EVERY spam message you get, just a few every now and then so Katharion can discover why it passed through their filters.
** If you don't know how to display the full header, use your favorite search engine and type in "how do I display full email headers" or similar wording.
If the first line looks like:
Received: from psmtp.com [64.18.0.167] by webryders.net
... you can tell by the "psmtp.com" and the IP address starting with 64.18.0 that it went through Postini. Forward this email, with the header, to spam@postini.com. I'm not sure what they'll do but it's worth a try.
However, if the first line is anything else, such as:
Received: from dhd101.neoplus.adsl.tpnet.pl [83.23.185.101] by webryders.net
... then the message went AROUND Postini and Katharion and never got a chance to be filtered. I don't know how the spammers do this, but they do. Forward this email, with the full header, to bjr@webryders.net
2. Another reason you might be getting more spam is that Katharion seems not to filter subscription emails as well as Postini. And the fact is, they shouldn't. Subscription emails are sent to you from (usually) legitimate email services because your email has been added to their list. Now I'm not saying you intentionally added yourself, but somebody did. Maybe you bought something online, and that site sold your email address, and now you're on the subscription list, and Katharion thinks you want these messages. But you don't.
Here's how you can help:
When you receive these emails, DO NOT send them to me. Instead, click on the link near the bottom that allows you to unsubscribe. As I said, most of these subscription services are legitimate and will remove your email address, even if it takes a week or so.
Also, log into your Katharion and/or Postini account and look at your junk mail. If you see mail with an unsubscribe link, or a way to reply with unsubscribe in the subject line, then go ahead and deliver or release that message to yourself. When it arrives in your email, open it and then unsubscribe.
Okay, so I won't give up the fight against spam. I even think we can win, eventually, but it will take large numbers of us. I'm not saying it's going to be pretty, and you will have to make sacrifices, and there may be no clear exit strategy ... but it's a battle worth fighting.***
Thanks for any help you can provide.
*** Nothing here is intended to satirize or malign the cause in which our troops are currently engaged.
For printouts of this article, please send an email to Brad at bjr@webryders.net or bjryder@gmail.com or webryders@yahoo.com or bjryder@aim.com or bjr@netryders.com or
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