Subject: Spam, CCL, and me...

From: Jan Labanowski <jkl$at$ccl.net>
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 11:11:53 -0400 (EDT)

The question from subscriber prompted this message to all subscribers.

1) I do understand subscribers concerns that they do not want to post to
   CCL from their company/university e-mail address. Yes, there are policies,
   and liabilities involved. Yes, it is much safer to post from you
   PRIVATE email address. However, there is an advantage to post from
   company/university address.

2) The reason for posting with the company/university address is that
   I very reluctantly put them onto a blacklist. That is, you can post from
   these addresses and your mail will not have "Access denied" bounce.
   The private accounts like on yahoo.com or hotmail.com, etc., often
   have problems posting to CCL since the respective domains are on
   the blacklist (since I get tons of spam from them). 

3) You can post to CCL from ANY address on Earth, assuming that the subnet
   from which you post is not blacklisted. If it is blacklisted (i.e.,
   mail bounces with 'Access denied' from chemistry$at$ccl.net), you need
   to send your message to me: jkl$at$ccl.net so I resend it. The subscription
   list is not checked when deciding if message can be posted. Your
   subscription address is only the address WHERE YOU GET MAIL from CCL. 
   You do not have to use it to POST to CCL. So you can still receive mail to
   your company address, but post to CCL from your private address, or your
   friend's private address, whatever it it. 

4) As I said, many "free e-mail accounts" will have problem posting, since
   the providers of such service also provide a opportunity for spammers.
   Now, if your mail from the private address bounces from CCL, send it to 
   jkl$at$ccl.net (I do not have a blacklist attached to this address, to my
   demise and despair) and  I will resend message to CCL for you.

5) Read the bottom of the messages you receive from CCL. For example,
   when you post to CCL, put the four letter word, CCL:, somewhere on
   the Subject line. It will prevent your message to go to unconditional
   manual review (it may well still end up there if you use some words which
   are often found in spam messages or some other things in your message may
   be "suspisious" to the CCL scripts).   

Please understand that CCL gets about 1000 spam messages a day.
You see only one in a month or less, on average, but it happens because
I work on the principle 'better safe than sorry'. Of course, 
once you have to screen mail manually or automatically, it will
cause delays and often human errors. Oh well... There are people out
there who screwed it up for all of us... We need a new e-mail standard
which authenticates the sender of mail. I will gladly receive all my
spam, if they pay me a $1 per each message. I would be a millionaire by now... 

Jan K. Labanowski         |  phone: 614-292-9279,  FAX: 614-292-7168
Ohio Supercomputer Center |  E-mail: jkl$at$ccl.net 
1224 Kinnear Rd,          |  http://www.ccl.net/~jkl
Columbus, OH 43212-1163   |  http://www.ccl.net/    http://asdn.net/