From chemistry-request # - at - # ccl.net Wed May 28 11:11:54 2003 Received: from ccl.net (atlantis.ccl.net [192.148.249.4]) by server.ccl.net (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h4SFBsgC007100 for ; Wed, 28 May 2003 11:11:54 -0400 Received: from krakow.ccl.net (krakow.ccl.net [192.148.249.195]) by ccl.net (8.11.6+Sun/8.11.6/OSC 2.1) with ESMTP id h4SFBrt05039; Wed, 28 May 2003 11:11:53 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 11:11:53 -0400 (EDT) From: Jan Labanowski To: chemistry$at$ccl.net cc: Jan Labanowski Subject: Spam, CCL, and me... Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII 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/