[Techtalk] bouncing e-mails

[agoats at compuserve.com]

All,

First, I offer no ill will and generally pass off any blowing off of steam.

Next, some further information to go with my previous post:

My outgoing mail is through a different ISP, who has on occasion blocked 
my e-mails out to the DFWUUG as possible spam (recruiters posting 
incorrectly; however, I was sending too many e-mails at a time to one 
location, which tagged their spam filters). I have e-mails from my ISP 
and my request to them to not block my e-mails to the DFWUUG and their 
input on how I was tagged. This was a special effort for a specific 
case. If this can happen to me, it can happen to anyone else with any 
ISP or mail service.

My incoming mail to CompuServe is my original e-mail account for nearly 
30 years. So many tech magazines, info and personal mail are tied to 
that address that I don't want to change it. It predates the internet as 
we know it. Even though it is now governed by AOL, my original pop mail 
service to compuserve.com is preserved; it is not aol.com or csi.com, 
but compuserve.com.

CompuServe's system, as well as Verizon, Yahoo, Excite, GMail and 
others, do filtering of e-mails for possible spam to reduce bandwidth. 
As such, Michelle's original post did not make it to me; my first 
indication was Carla's reply.  I had to go through the web and access my 
account at CompuServe to free up her e-mail from their spam trap. 
Likewise, at the same time, I had to free up newsletters from TechWeb, 
InformationWeek, Network Computing and a technical white paper link from 
Intel, all caught by my ISP's spam filters to reduce bandwith issues. 22 
legitimate e-mails out of 80 trapped by CompuServe. This happens to 
everyone, so if you're missing an important e-mail, check if your ISP is 
filtering before you.

As for e-mail addresses, I have about 7 e-mail addresses through 
different mail services. I use Thunderbird to collect all of my e-mails 
and put them in the proper locations on my local machine. The other 
addresses are for specific purposes or as a member of that group or 
organization.

My colleague with the business mailing issue is having problems with 
other sites capturing, delaying or blocking his business notices. He's 
on ATT and AOL is the major one doing the blocking, but there are others 
besides AOL, including Yahoo and GMail.

For information about what's happening on the NET, check your localized 
CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team). http://www.cert.org/ ,  USA is 
http://www.us-cert.gov/ ,  FRANCE  http://www.cert-ist.com/ ,

http://www.internationalcybercenter.org/certicc/certworld  has the links 
to most countries around the world including Australia, Canada, Germany, 
Russia, China and more. 

As for the bounces I get as the MailMan administrator for DFWUUG,  I 
have a phish originating from Yahoo.com pretending to be the FBI, I have 
Russian spam spoofing US e-mails and originating from Russia, I have 
some Russian spam originating from China, I have UPS and FedEx phish's 
coming from different parts of the globe. Most of the spam and phish 
e-mail address lists are probably coming from those companies or sites 
who have had their user information stolen, like Sony. All that personal 
info and e-mail addresses, how many millions is that? This causes a lot 
of bandwidth interference and is a major nuisance for any administrator. 
I get upwards of 250 content filtered block notices and various bounces 
per day and have to find the legit messages to move on. This is not fun.

Alvin