List, I wouldn't be hard on Greg for one nanosecond concerning his ongoing problem with AOL. Below is a message from my server, TheRiver, and their parent, Nationwide Internet. It looks like they've been having some of these same problems, all dumped in the lap of the spammers and phishers. Spamming and phishing should be made a capital crime. In the U.S. of 1930, it would have been. We've gotten too leinient.
Milton Schick 1964 442 Cutlass [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, December 04, 2006 11:48 PM Subject: An important message from Nationwide Internet! > Dear Valued Customer. > > I am writing today to offer my apologies and tell you what we are doing to > resolve the problems you have experienced with our email and spam/virus > filtering over the last few weeks, as well as the problems you may have > had contacting us due to the large volume of calls and emails we are > receiving. > > We value your business and we recognize that you have a choice of internet > service providers. We understand that many of you have experienced either > some degradation in service or outright failure of our email and spam > filtering system over the last several weeks. > > We have had two specific problems; First, we recently completed an > upgrade and migration to a new spam and virus filtering system as well as > a new webmail and spam management interface. > (https://spamfilter.nationwide.net) Due to both a larger than expected > influx of spam and viruses from the internet as a whole and an > unanticipated hardware system problem that did not show up in our testing > or previous migrations, you may have experienced slow email sending or > receiving and/or outright failure of mail to be processed. In addition, > if you are connected to the internet via some other provider, you may have > experienced a problem sending mail via an email client like Outlook > Express using smtp on port 25. Port 587 with SMTP authentication must be > used if you are connecting to our mail server to send mail but are not > physically connected to our network. > > In addition, you may have been experiencing problems with "failure" > messages from AOL, Comcast, Earthlink, Verizon and possibly a few other > ISPs. This is due to an increasing global problem of spammers using > trojan horse and "phishing" software to capture unsuspecting users > personal computers to send large numbers of spam messages through infected > customer computers to our servers. This is not limited to Nationwide > Internet, but is a problem all across the internet with many large and > small ISPs whom we work with daily. Unfortunately, in the case of spam > and virus proliferation, we are all innocent victims of the explosive spam > phenomena. > > We are working with our software and hardware vendors to resolve both the > slow access speed for our webmail and spam filtering systems and the slow > or failed delivery and receipt issues. We expect to have the failure > notices from AOL, Earthlink, Verizon and Comcast resolved today and we > expect to begin to be able to allow some messages from these ISPs to come > thru as well as we un-block them when they respond to our spam complaints > from their networks. The hardware issue has been most difficult for our > vendors, IBM and EMC, to diagnose and fix. We are working on it every > hour of every day with our vendors and we will either have it resolved > this week or move to another provider. > > In the meantime, we are adding additional staff in our call center to take > your calls and updating our website with more current information to > ensure that you are informed of what is happening. I would appreciate it > if you would continue to send any failure messages you receive to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] and we will act on them promptly. It is > important to note that we cannot control the send or receive policies of > other ISPs and they may choose to continue blocking some email. We will > continue to work with the entire internet community to control spam and > resolve these issues as they arise. > > Please reference the following two open trouble tickets for further > updates to these issues. > > For problems logging into spamfilter.nationwide.net or webmail systems: > http://status.nationwide.net/system_status.cgi?action=view&id=1163714314 > > > For problems with email blocking or failure notices: > http://status.nationwide.net/system_status.cgi?action=view&id=1165258314 > > I apologize for these ongoing problems and encourage you to continue to > notify us if you are having any recurring problems that I have not > referenced here. We will address them as quickly as possible. I will > send another communication as soon as I know that we have resolved all of > these issues. > > Thank you for your continued business. > > Lisa Bickford > President > Nationwide Internet > > > For more information about the global increase in spam, please read these > online sources: > http://www.tech2.com/india/news/antivirus-security-internet/image-spam-rises-by-500-percent/2906/0 > http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11420 > http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2470742,00.html > http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20061009/anti-spam-lawsuit.htm > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.15.9/573 - Release Date: 12/5/2006 4:07 PM
