[Zsd-news] New ADSL option, latest on "The War on Spam"

[Ian Forbes]

Hi All

I hope our users enjoyed the holiday season and I wish them well in the
New Year.


NEW ADSL OFFERING:

There were major changes to the ADSL "ISP" accounts during the 2nd half
of last year. Both ZSD and many of our clients are still coming to terms
with some of the implications.

One new development is that we are now offering a new ADSL "ISP" account
targeted at business users. If you use more than 5GB per month of
traffic and/or you wish to protect yourself against the potential
disruption of having your service "hard capped", this one will be of
interest to you. The novel feature of the new account is that clients
will receive rebates for portion of their unused Cap. Full details
are in the attached PDF document.


THE WAR AGAINST SPAM:

We get a lot of feedback from our customers regarding spam e-mail. This
is a major problem for both the users and providers of ISP services.

It seems to get worse over Christmas. Perhaps spammers think their
readers will be in the mood to spend money and more receptive to their
messages, or perhaps they think it is easier for them to get there
message through when there is less distraction from real work.

To give an indication of the scale of the problem, ZSD e-mail servers
REJECT over 65% of all mail delivery attempts to ZSD as spam, virus, or
incorrectly addressed mail. In other words our servers have to stop two
thirds of all incoming mail without the chance for any human
verification or intervention.

Obviously this has some implications. Firstly it is possible that
bono-fida mail gets blocked in this process - a "false positive". All
mail servers should obey the following basic principles:

- An e-mail must either be delivered to the recipient or

- a "bounce" message must be sent back to the originator.

Thus if an e-mail falls foul of a "false positive" test, the originator
will be made aware of the problem - provided the message has a valid
"from" address and that the originator reads incoming "bounce" messages.

On the other hand, there are many spam messages which slip through and
get delivered. The inconvenience caused by a single false positive can
easily out weight that of an entire Inbox filled with spam messages.
Thus anti-spam measures are set to accept a message rather than reject
if there is any doubt.

If correspondents report problems sending e-mail to you which appear to
be the result of a "false positive", please ask them to forward the
resulting bounce message to "support at zsd.co.za", or fax it to us at
+27-21-674-1106. We will investigate all false positives.

If you have problems sending mail, please check that your mail program
is configured to use a valid, correctly spelt "from" address. (Also
check that your mail program is configured to use the correct "smtp"
server for sending mail.) A computer infected with a virus may
experience problems sending mail.

The War Against Spam is an ongoing one. We have recently upgraded our
anti-spam software and initial indications are that less spam is getting
through the net. This does not imply that we can stop all spam. As
spammers take measures to work around our new software more of it will
start to be noticed.


FEEDBACK

We are happy to receive feedback on spam issues - particularly false
positives. We use this to monitor the effectiveness of our software.

However, please note that there is no simple way to "block mail from
this person" or to "stop these messages". Spammers keep changing their
addresses (usually using forged addresses) and they go to great lengths
to get past anti-spam meaures. Thus there is no easy way to react to a
report of an individual spam message. Individuals who are keen on making
a personal contribution to this "War" should consider signing up with
spam reporting services like "Spamcop" (http://www.spamcop.net)


SENDING OUT BULK E-MAIL

If you are a business person with a marketing function, you may want to
send out bulk messages to your clients from time to time. If you do this
please respect the following principals:

- Include valid contact details (name, address, phone and fax numbers
etc) for yourself and your business as well as a valid return e-mail
address.

- Supply a mechanism for recipients to "un-subscribe" themselves from
your list. If un-subscription is a manual process, make sure that it is
completed timeously.

- Only send messages to clients that you have an existing business
relationship with.

- It is NOT ACCEPTABLE to send messages to a "list" of e-mail
addresses"acquired" from another source such as a previous employer, a
sister,company or another branch of your own company.

- It is NOT ACCEPTABLE to deploy an "opt out" policy. Ie sending
messages to a large number of addresses with an invitation for those who
are not interested to "un-subscribe". Likewise a "one time" message
suggesting that you will never send the recipient another message is
also NOT ACCEPTABLE.

- Keep your messages short and avoid large graphics.

- Respect the limitations imposed by upstream mail servers which limit
the volumes of bulk mail.


Regards


Ian Forbes




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