[Zsd-news] Seasons Greetings

[I. Forbes]

Hello All

Seasons Greetings:

We would like to wish all of our Christian users a Merry Christmas. 

For our Muslim users, we wish you well over the fast - it is nearly 
over.

For everybody please have a good holiday, and come back 
refreshed in the New Year.


Some Good News:

Our prices, at least some of them, are coming down!  Yes we are 
dropping the price of our ISDN dial-ups.  This has been make 
possible by our upstream provider SAIX, who are dropping their 
prices to us for these accounts.  The new prices will be as follows:

Single user ISDN dial-up accounts:  R139 incl VAT

ISDN dial-up surcharge for Zslic e-mail server:  R101.46 incl VAT

The new prices will take effect from the 1 Jan 2002.

One the other hand, we have some not so good news.  Our prices 
for ".com" domains have increased due to the collapse of the Rand. 
Our charges are now R400 to register a ".com" and R200 per year 
to renew it. These are still very competitive prices in the market.

We do not have any details about any other price changes at this 
stage.  I hope that there will be few if any increases.  However 
Telkom is trying to increase their prices.  There is a currently a 
dispute with ICASA (the industry regulator).  Let us hope that 
Telkom do not get things all their own way, as if they do a typical 
local call for Internet access will go up dramatically (over 40%).


Virus Updates.

ZSD has had virus filtering in place on our mail servers for well over 
a year already.  You may have noticed from the press that some of 
the major ISP's are now offering virus scanning as part of their 
packages.  This is good news, many of the viruses we receive 
come via those ISP's mail servers.  

However we should point out that the filtering on our servers is 
designed to pick common viruses by looking at certain features of 
the e-mail and attached files.  Our system does not rely on "pattern 
files" which have to be updated regularly.  Thus we catch and reject 
a large number of viruses, but we do not catch them all.  

The pattern matching system now used by some other ISP's is also 
limited in that it is only as good as the patterns that are used.  
Whenever a new, rapidly spreading virus, appears many sites get 
infected before the patterns get updated.  Indeed, despite what the 
adverts may claim, our log files show that our servers rejected 
viruses from a "virus free" provider as recently as a few days ago.  

The two approaches are complimentary, and between them we 
should eliminate even more viruses from the internet. 

No amount of virus scanning is a substitute for good "personal 
hygiene".  You should never open an "executable" attachment that 
you receive via e-mail, unless you are 100% sure that you know 
where it came  from.  You should also chose your software carefully 
and make sure that you update it when security patches are 
released by the software supplier. Running virus scanning software 
on your PC is still a "good idea".

Thats all for now, drive carefully over the holidays.  Next news letter 
will be in the New Year.



Ian Forbes

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Ian Forbes ZSD
http://www.zsd.co.za
Office: +27 21 683-1388  Fax: +27 21 674-1106
Snail Mail: P.O. Box 46827, Glosderry, 7702, South Africa
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