Randy Cassingham's Blog

Posted by Denise, NC on February 27, 2008:

I won't be happy with spam "filters" until you can direct them to spell-check headers.

It would be easy enough for me to tell all of my friends & family not to send me anything with special characters (anything requiring a "shift-something") and to proofread their headers and not mix numbers and letters (like using C1@LiS or ffarmmacy really makes me want to buy prescription drugs from you!).

By the way, Randy, I read and followed your spam primer two years ago, and have seen a drastic reduction the amount of spam I get in my accounts -- even in my Hotmail account! Just this week, though, I had to direct my local news station to your site. They had a local "expert" on spam reduction encouraging people to opt out of spam my using the email link they provide at the bottom of the letter. I was receiving tons of spam until I quit trusting the hucksters who were just phishing for live email addresses. Now I get only 3-4 a week now, over 4 email addresses!

Thank you!

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Glad it helped you. If only everyone read it, understood it, and practiced what was there, spam would virtually disappear.... -rc

Posted by Gilah, Karmi'el, Israel on February 28, 2008:

I wish I could get Comcast to quit blocking my emails to my family. They have evidently tagged my ISP as a spammer. They've been doing it since last summer. Sometimes mail gets through from my main email account and sometimes it doesn't. When it keeps bouncing I'm forced to use another of my email accounts to send email to my family. I've gone round and round with them on this and even my ISP has contacted them. They've told my family and my ISP that they aren't blocking my ISP, but the repeated bounce backs tell a different story.

Posted by Patrick, Georgia, USA on February 29, 2008:

I guess I have been blessed. I've been with my local ISP for several years without a hitch. Downtimes are rare and usually last less than an hour. I don't get spam and unblocking something is pretty easy to do.

The best part is the customer service. I have called at 3 in the morning and within 5 minutes gotten a real person who stayed on the phone with me until the problem was fixed. Then called the next day just to be sure that everything was still working properly. The longest I have been on hold is less than 5 minutes. I've never been passed from person to person and actually have one of the people in my address book because they are now a friend.

I think a lot of the big companies could learn something from some of these smaller ISP's. I know I wouldn't trade mine for anything.

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No doubt about it: you've been blessed. -rc

Posted by Lisa, Ontario on February 29, 2008:

I run my own ISP for my email so I don't have the junky filters verizon uses (I use mail filtering software that works) but when it goes down I have to call my self to complain. :/

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You're not an ISP. You run your own server, which is different. It's who you pay for your connection that's your service provider. -rc

Posted by Bob, Holley, NY on March 1, 2008:

Verizon is my ISP, but I do not use their email program.
One resaon is the dumb spam filter. It's so dumb, it blocks the user newsletter from Verizon! Can you imagine? Their own spam filter thinks their newsletter is spam!

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In this case, it may be an indication of its true value.... -rc

Posted by Fred, Irving, Texas on March 1, 2008:

These kinds of stories convince me of the wisdom of my decision to not authorize anyone to filter my e-mail. I run the spam filter that is part of the Mac mail client, and I have it set up to move ALL spam to the spam folder, which I periodically review to make sure nothing landed in there that I wanted. I'm still finding good e-mails in there after several years of the program "learning".

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Verizon also supposedly does that -- let you/your mail client filter mail, and anything they think is spam goes in the "spam folder" for you to review. They allow users to "whitelist" certain mail to get through. Yet they still intercepted the Premium issues they paid to get. That's "evil" -- they gave users a sense of control that was not really there. And it's "stupid" -- they allowed ONE WORD in proper context to stop delivery of "whitelisted" mail. I hope your provider is "good" and "smart". -rc

Posted by John, Idaho on March 1, 2008:

Spam is a pain in the butt, but not receiving important or desired emails is infinitely worse. Any spam filter that does not allow you to examine the filtered emails and choose ones to be released is to be avoided if at all possible. Last time I checked, my delete key still worked.

One extreme example was a friend whose employer's spam filter would allow all advertising for products to increase the size of his reproductive organ, but would block emails that mentioned the President of the United States by name.

Posted by Chris - Illinois on March 1, 2008:

I had Insightbb, recently they were bought out by Comcast and the transition has SUCKED. I can receive but not send email. Also, I can't connect to any https secure site like my BANK. Yeah, that sucks.

Posted by Steve in Ithaca on March 1, 2008:

Re: Gilah's experience.

After getting inexplicably blacklisted & blocked at Cornell U. or Ithaca College (I'm a pastor, & communicate with parishioners in both institutions), an IT guy at CU identified my problem.

My Broadband service with Verizon uses "dynamic IP" - meaning, every time my modem goes off and on again (I switch it, or we have a power outage) it gets a new IP address assigned to it from the pool of them that Verizon possesses (versus "static IP" - which is forever assigned to that piece of equipment).

If one is assigned to me that someone else had been using to spam people (purposefully or inadvertently), and it had been blacklisted by institutional supporters (I forget the name - it's a subscription base for institutions that identifies spammers, notes the IP address of origin, and uploads a list to the institution whose mail servers automatically reject anything from that source), then my mail doesn't go through.

Only quick solution I've found on this one is to reboot my modem - get a new IP assigned, and skip merrily along.

Comcast may also be a subscriber to one of those blacklisting systems. Reboot the modem and see if it improves your luck. Once you are going through, if at all possible, don't ever then shut it off & lose the functioning address.

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There are quite a few such blacklisting services, some better than others. But yes, I use a static IP in part for the reasons you describe. -rc

Posted by Mark, Grater Washington D.C. area on March 1, 2008:

There is something to be said for Free email: good and bad. I've had pretty good luck with GMail so far. Only one or two messages a week make it past the spam block. Hotmail on the other hand, while better in recent years, seems to always allow one particular spammer in. University of Phoenix to be specific; Usually two messages at a time (another clue that it might be spam).

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Hotmail and Yahoo both have either rejected TRUE in the past or, much worse, discarded it without putting it in the user's spam folder OR sending a bounce message. It got so bad that I warned Premium subscribers away from it. I have never seen that at gmail, though, and that's why it's my top choice. That, and its ads don't flash in my face, demanding attention away from why I'm there. -rc