Email - a plea

[#1]

Email from PN has, as we all know been a bit of a farce in the recent past.  Over the last few weeks all seemed to be broadly stable but then we get the dynamic blocking saga of the last few days.
I don't have all the detailed information immediately to hand but my impression is that email problems seem to begin when something gets altered by PN for one reason or another.
Therefore a plea, from a customer who is getting rather fed up with all of this:
Get the platform working to suit your customers again.  Then leave it alone!!!!  No more tinkering or tweaking, no more "improvements".  All we want is an email system that works consistently and reliably!

[#2]

I think we'd all share that sentiment Alan.
We didn't introduce dynamic IP blocking to make life more difficult. We did it because new spam is growing exponentially and it can't be left unchecked. We were receiving ongoing complaints about spam, and forecasting significant system load problems within months. We have to tackle the problem just to stand still and to maintain a stable service.
It's got to the stage where radical, positive action must be taken and while it's clear that dynamic IP blocking was wrongly executed, we can't just sit on our hands. What's obvious though is that we need a new approach, and some help in achieving our goal. That's what we are working on now. There will be more details as decisions are made.
Ian

[#3]

e-mail is so last century.
Most ppl under 30 just use MSN istead and avoid the whole spam issue

[#4]

I'm 27 and still use email.

[#5]

So do business use it - and some are financially dependent upon it functioning correctly without losses or delays.

[#6]

Quote from: ed

e-mail is so last century. Most ppl under 30 just use MSN istead and avoid the whole spam issue

http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/20030413_msn_messenger_spam.htm
http://www.symantec.com/enterprise/security_response/weblog/2007/06/windows_live_messenger_spam.html
Seems instant messengers have a spam problem too
I use e-mail daily; speaking to the OH at work and pestering PN

[#7]

I think plusnet have to make changes people seem to forget spam costs isp money the more spam the more storage isp have to get (hard drives) so storage cost money the customer will have to pay in the end or isp will sink under spam.
3 months ago I had been getting up to 150 e-mails aday and 99% were all spam so I have been sinking inunder the stuff too
Now I get 15 to 20 e-mails a day
puddy

[#8]

One way I found to fight the 99.9% spam was to do the filtering in reverse.
I told people I gave my e-mail to, to put my name in the SUBJECT
"Ed, my new game idea" feel quite natural for a subject heading
then just filtered for my name "Ed" and dumped the rest

[#9]

Quote from: ed

One way I found to fight the 99.9% spam was to do the filtering in reverse. I told people I gave my e-mail to, to put my name in the SUBJECT "Ed, my new game idea" feel quite natural for a subject heading then just filtered for my name "Ed" and dumped the rest

I use Thunderbird and have set it so that emails from senders that are not in my address book are automatically put into spam folder.  It does not stop them coming, but it makes it easier to cope with.
Alex

[#10]

Quote from: ed

e-mail is so last century. Most ppl under 30 just use MSN istead and avoid the whole spam issue

I take it you mean Hotmail?  It does not stop spam for me. How did you manage to avoid spam messages?
Thanks,
Alex

[#11]

I like to read some of my spam. It's quite funny.
Especially the one that said that the "Bank of England" had a lot of money that they wanted to send me [followed by lots of spelling mistakes, Americanese etc].

[#12]

I used to get them from lots of banks telling me my account has problems and I need to login at their completely non-dodgy looking link to fix it.
Maybe I should mail them to tell them I don't have an account with that bank

[#13]

Quote from: axisofevil

I like to read some of my spam. It's quite funny. Especially the one that said that the "Bank of England" had a lot of money that they wanted to send me [followed by lots of spelling mistakes, Americanese etc].

Indeed. I check the headers of everything my spam bucket before deletion. Most of the many 'improve your manhood' ones are sad, physically impossible or would require a jumbo codpiece, but one I received this week made my day: "If I were any larger I'd be in a circus" !! 

[#14]

Quote from: ed

One way I found to fight the 99.9% spam was to do the filtering in reverse. I told people I gave my e-mail to, to put my name in the SUBJECT "Ed, my new game idea" feel quite natural for a subject heading then just filtered for my name "Ed" and dumped the rest

Oddly enough I get spam that follows almost exactly that format in its subject lines.
BTW  - someone is using my domain in the From/Reply fields in spam messages which happens. I've just had 75 messages arrive - all of them mail delivery / spam block messages from other ISPs/companies
Frankly if companies turned off the sodding "You've sent us spam" messages there would be less congestion!
As it was they were all stupid account names and the catch-all at JTN simply forwarded them to my account at yahoo which usually does a good job of working out what is actually spam
If you want to add 201.79.71.182 to a black list feel free as its responsible for sending them all

[#15]

I redirect many of my previously used addresses that are now being spammed. I send them to a Gmail address and then get Gmail to send them back to a particular f9 address - one that I do not use for anything else.
Gmail does an excellent job of removing the spam and storing those in its spam folder, only forwarding the ones that are genuine, plus a rare one or two that no one else in the world has flagged as spam.
Because of its scale (huge) Gmail has very good spam filtering.
It works for me - as a business I can not totally blackhole those previously used addresses.