Evergreen Gardenworks wrote:
*At 09:30 PM 2/12/04 -0500, you wrote:
Brent (and all users who's ISP uses Postini as an email
filter)
Pacific Net uses a spam filtering system that thinks our
bonsai
messages are
some form of "Junk Mail" that's being generated by a spam
broadcast
generator.
I've just visited the Pacific.net site and it appears
they're using
the
commercial spam filtering company called "Postini" which
will
filter
messages that it considers to be a virus, and those email it
considers to be
"junk mail" unless you tell it to allow these messages to
pass
through it's
filters.
I don't know when this thread started, but there ISN'T any spam
filtering system that doesn't require some kind of input from the
beneficiary. There are basic formulae that filter systems use to
"decide" what is or is not spam. MOST mailing list addresses
will fall within that formulae, if only because of the volume of
mail that comes from that address, so if you belong to a list,
you MUST tell your spam filter that the e-mail is OK from that
address. This is true whether you use an individual program
(Mailwasher, for example) or your ISPs program. Usually it isn't
a big deal and you only need to do it once. (It's always a good
idea to forward your entire addressbook to the filter also.)
I just went to Postini and checked my settings and addresses.
As I
thought,
the bonsai listserv address is an approved sender. The weird
messages
I get
are not quarantined. They are sent on to me, but they have
the Spam
warning
appended, with whatever the message there was, added as an
attachment. I
don't think changing any of my settings is going to make a
difference, but
I just contacted the ISP to see if there is anything I can do
about
it.
They are much more responsive than Postini folks.
This has happened periodically in the past, but has not been
a big
problem.
Once customer sent me a message that came in this form. I
replied
that I
couldn't read it and asked him to send only plain text
messages,
which he
did, and it came through just fine. He was using some sort of
MS
Outlook
and commented that he had some sort instant email thingy and
thought
maybe
that was the problem. I wouldn't touch Outlook with a ten
foot pole,
so I
have no idea what he was talking about, but when he switched
to a
good old
plain text message, he got through. This is the message that
Jim
Lewis is
saying as well, and I think it is the best solution to the
problem.
Yes. Email was DESIGNED to be a text only utility. It can be
doctored to send all kinds of crud, cute and semi-cute, but you
limit the people who can read your deathless prose if you use
these "features" -- and you annoy others who may be able to read
it but have to wade through a lot of junque to do it.
Folks: The geegaws, dancing gifs, colored text, and whatever
woozles
your
system gives you to play with, don't make your thoughts or
words one
bit
(no pun intented) more intelligent. It just keeps you from
communicating to
some us, which was the whole idea in the first place.
snip
? Susie, on the
other
hand, who just got a shiny new XP machine spends twice as
much time
just
trying to get it to work than she does in productivity. And
just as
soon as
she has figured out the latest manifestation of her edu's
website
where she
posts here online schoolwork, they think up some cool new
changes.
That is the curse of MIS departments. They always think that
dancing bears are better -- and if they're UNIVERSITY MIS folks,
it's seemingly even worse.
snip
And, to whoever sent this last (below), it sounds like a
commercial to me. Tsk. Tsk.
Jim Lewis -
- Tallahassee, FL - Bonsaiests
are like genealogists: We know our roots!
I'm an experienced user spam filter user. I used to use
SpamInspector,
plus used SpamArrest (online server) to add a challenge email
step to
one of my accounts...
recently I discovered another filter at www.spambully.com
SpamBully was rated BEST BUY in October 2003 WIRED Magazine:
http://tinyurl.com/4vh9j
I have downloaded trial, and love it!
SpamBully ofr Outlook does it all - I have even been able to
delete all
of my old, manually entered spam-filtering rules - the Bayesian
wizard
is phenominal out-of-the-box! Now mine is trained, I am seeing
99%+
accuracy (in fact, for the past 24 hours, I've seen 100%
accuracy!)
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