Msen will attempt to filter and slow the amount of spam coming to our
customers from outside machines. This is difficult as many of the
offenders move accounts weekly, and make pre-emptive filtering
useless. As the internet community gets more and more fed up with spam,
more options are being produced to filter mail.
August 2000 Msen has started adding a header line to email when we
"suspect" that a piece of email may be spam. This is an
automated system using the Realtime Blackhole List
(RBL),
ORBS,
and the Dialup Users List (DUL). This
detection is done by the ip addresses found in the headers or envelope
of the email message.
X-Spam-Suspected-by-Msen-because-of-Envelope: [207.69.200.226]_orbs
X-Spam-Suspected-by-Msen-because-of-Header: [210.155.14.194]_rbl
are examples of the header line that is added to the email. These detection
services do provide "false positives", especially ORBS. Therefore, instead of throwing out the
email, Msen has chosen to only tag it as possible spam, and leave it up to the user to throw out
the email based on the recommendation. One known false positive is Amazon.com's
purchase receipts. That example alone serves as case and point on why we do not
automatically throw out suspected spam. Currently about 6% of mail is being tagged.
To make use of these headers, one uses filters in their email software. The instructions
for Netscape 4.7 are available. Unix users
would use procmail for filtering.
Guidelines for posting to Usenet
Limit your posting to 5 newsgroups or less. People don't want
to see the same stuff over and over again.
If you are posting to a binaries group, your posting must contain a
binary that is relevant.
If you are posting an adult picture, post only in the alt.binaries.pictures.*
groups. Rec.nude is not for pictures.
Limit your posting to once per week.
99% of Usenet newsgroups have charters prohibiting
advertisements. If the newsgroup charter denies posting of advertisements
to the newsgroup, you are limited to a five
line advertising trailer, ie. signature, in your message, which must be
a contributing response to a current discussion.
Starting a new topic thread to advertise you product is not allowed.
The more restrictive policy of the charter or these rules will be enforced.
Permission for use given to other service providers without prior request.
