"wayne" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
news:
[email protected]...
> Sorry not quite a 4x4 question, but am I the only one who has seen
> there spam emails increase by at least three times in the last three
months,
> I
> used to get 20 a day now its more like 80, I use a mail washer but it is
not
> time we had better laws or forced our ISP to be more vigilant, BT must be
> making a fortune on people wasting time downloading this crap.
>
> regards
>
> wayne
>
> V8 RR/Landrover hybrid
> 4.0 SE Range rover
>
The trouble is (as far as the law is concerned) that most of this junk comes
from outside the UK - it doesnt really matter what laws we pass, it wont
stop people overseas sending junk to UK addresses.
It is not the ISP's job to personally check your mail for you and decide
what you may or may not want - any more than than it is for the post office
to open your mail and dump any junk for you (based on their judgement -
because that is the only way it can be done) - if someone sends you mail,
then it is up to you what you actually do with it. Remember, a tiny
percentage of recipients actually want this crap and respond to it (thats
the only reason they send it in the first place). It is not your ISPs job to
decide if you are one of the few who want it or one of the many that dont.
We offer our clients a service whereby all mail is redirected, filtered and
only "genuine mail" sent you the clients mailbox - and a report is sent each
day detailing all junk stopped so that the client can (if they wish) review
it and "release" any mail they want to read that has been stopped. I find
that it virtually never blocks "genuine" mail and stops 95% or more of the
junk (it is obviously down to the rules, which are updated regularly).
This is a Cost option - cost because it costs us, option because not
everybody wants to pay for it.
I am personally currently receiving a load of "undeliverables" because some
spammer is using my personal email address as the return address - these
people need locking up, but the world is not a small enough place yet to
make this easy.
Whilst I symphasise, I object (as a smallish ISP) to you implying that it is
in any way your ISP's fault - either you want email facilities or you dont,
and if you let your address fall into the wrong hands and start receiving
mail you dont want (this is often the root cause) then just remember that
all your ISP does is deliver mail to the address on the envelope.
Your ISP will be ****ed off by the amount of bandwidth used up by junk and
how on earth you think that the ISP (eg BT) makes money out of this is
beyond me - most people these days are either on broadband or using
unmetered dialup - so how can the additional bandwidth used and time
connected can possibly benefit the ISP is beyond me - IT COSTS THEM!
And remember - an ISP only has to block a single email in the belief that it
was junk when n fact it was not and they could be potentially liable for
huge sums. Your ISP is not your nanny.
It is just amazing what some people expect from their ISP - I know of
companies with turnovers of tens of millions and "mission critical" web site
and email facilities that they pay 20quid a month for and then expect an
army of individuals to personally help them when they have a problem which
is not even directly related to the technical facilities they pay for!
