on Fri, Oct 17, 2003 at 11:45:40AM -0400, Jeff Elkins (jeffelkins@earthlink.net) wrote:
> I'm getting hundreds and hundreds of hits daily. This Earthlink
> address is now almost all-swen all-the-time, except for debian and
> zaurus email.
I'm a fellow Earthlink subscriber (originally Netcom, through a series
of aquisitions).
With user-controlled, accountable, effective, and accurate SMTP-time
mail filtering, email remains a useful tool. Without this, I'm afraid,
we _are_ seeing the death of email.
Earthlink's response to Swen has been nothing short of gross
incompetence and neglect, bordering if not crossing the threshold of
fraud. A free filtering solution is supposedly in the works, to be
released in November. Past experience with "Spaminator" and
"SpamBlocker" suggests the company can't do for sh*t. The newsgroups
alt.provider.earthlink and earthlink.support.general-discussion have
been full of Swen talk for the past month.
SpamBlocker, as currently designed, offers two levels of "protection".
One of these "fights" spam by not letting you download it, though it
accumulates on your POP3 account, counting against your 10MB storage
allocation (at current rates of Swen accumulation, this is about 2-3
hours' time).
The simple truth is that Swen and virtually all viral mail are very
readily detectable, and should be blocked at SMTP time by ISPs. Much
spam traffic is similarly detectable. However the tools ELNK has
provided to date have been both utterly ineffective, and grossly
unaccountable to subscribers (you cannot tell what's been blocked).
I'm very strongly considering going fully self-hosting due to ELNK's
ineptitude.
Peace.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Of the top 24 industrialized nations, only Turkey has the government
covering a smaller percentage of medical costs than the USA.
- Laurie Garret, _Betrayal of Trust_
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