Rodger Ling wrote:

> Unfortunately, the continuing growth of spam has made e-mail far from
> reliable not just as UTC, but everywhere.  Thanks to spam (and
> viruses which are now primarily designed to spread spam), some
> percentage of mail just doesn't reach its destination, no matter what
> that destination might be.

I'm reading this a bit late (out sick most of the week) but what appears
to be happening is that your home ISP(s) are restricting outgoing mail
to only their registered SMTP server(s) in an effort to block spam.  We
are doing this on campus ourselves to prevent spam/virus spreading, so
that if you send mail from campus you must configure your mail client
(Eudora, Outlook [Express], Pegasus, Netscape, Mozilla, etc) to use the
official UTC smtp service "SMTP.UTC.EDU".  Mail originating anywhere
else may be spam, and may contain viruses (our SMTP tries to scan for both).

So when you go home and attempt to use "SMTP.UTC.EDU" it may no longer
work for the same reasons outlined above -- they are trying to thwart
spam and make you use their registered servers (for Charter, this is
smtp.charter.net, or smtp.chartertn.net; Comcast has smtp.comcast.com,
and so forth).

What leaks through as "spam blocks" occur when dial-up/DSL/cable
broadband adress blocks are allowed to send spam without this checking.
In short, as you travel the internet, "do as the natives do" and send
mail to the native SMTP server.

We cannot emphasize this enough.  We can spot this on campus and often
send you a friendly reminder, e-mail, or phone call; or barring that,
turn off your connection for a minute so you will call us and we can
help you with changing the configurations.

I realize there is an upswing in false positives, but the bulk of the
cause is that major ISPs (not just small fry such as UTC) are validating
that mail originate from their registered mailers, and the spam blocking
services are no longer accepting dial-up/DSL/broadband addresses as the
direct mail sending agent.

Let's not panic yet, we can work through this.  Believe me, you do not
want to see your mailbox if/when we turn these filters off.

Jeff