The war between the spammers and the anti-spammers (with all of us) has
jumped to a new level in recent weeks. Among other things, the spammers
are attacking with new trojans and viruses that infect more home
computers. The anti-spammers are striking back by blacklisting
dailup/DSL/cable user networks, more or less forcing email to go through
your Internet Provider's official email server (and will likely push
Internet Providers to take more action against infected PCs, just like
we do here at UTC in the dorms).
When I checked earlier this week, something like 70% of email sent to
UTC is being blocked as from blacklisted spammer sites. Just imagine
getting over three times more email messages, 99.999% all of which would
be junk.
Richard
Nora Kile wrote:
> I have actually been getting MORE of these Nigerian/ etc. messages in just
> the last couple of weeks. Has anyone else? I see they are trying to
> disquise them pretty well with subject lines like "Please Help", or just a
> name (that of course I don't recognize). Just got another one today. My
> delete key is getting a work out. :-)
>
> At 04:04 PM 12/5/2003 -0500, James Russell wrote:
>
>> I understand the frustration of those who deal with Yahoo subsribers.
>> I do
>> myself. But let me also give praise to our ITD staff (whatever those
>> initials stand for) for reducing the amount of spam we get. I
>> suddenly realized today that I have not received any in months. I
>> remember getting one message from some shiftless Nigerian telling me that
>> I was in line to inherit $52 million if only I would let him have my bank
>> account number, another with something about Viagra or its equivalent,
>> and
>> an ad for some potion to help with penis enlargement. At the time, I
>> thought that there was a connection between the three, which came within
>> days of each other. I am glad not to be deluged with such now.
>>
>> Mike Russell
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Richard Gambrell <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 14:39:33 -0500
>> Subject: Re: [UTCSTAFF] yahoo.com email blacklisted for spam
>>
>> This is not just to Kim, but to all of you who have written to me:
>>
>> I think I overstated the degree of the problem with Yahoo. Your reaction
>> verifies the importance of email in today's world and this incident
>> highlights that spam is now a very important problem.
>>
>> So far as we know at the moment, there is only one Yahoo mail server
>> that was blacklisted. Yahoo has a great many mail servers and we have
>> only learned of a single example of an email by a UTC student that was
>> delayed (and it came through eventually). I felt it was important to
>> notify the campus of a pending and perhaps major problem, or perhaps a
>> problem that had already occurred, but so far it has not appeared to be
>> that big a deal.
>>
>> We all very dependent upon email. Please, believe me when I say that
>> we in ITD recognize that and are doing everything we can to keep it
>> working well.
>>
>> UTC email would be completely unusable without blocking spam. We do not
>> have the staff to follow up on every complaint or individual spammer we
>> see. We, and a great many other organizations, are very dependent on
>> anti-spam organizations running services that identify spammers to keep
>> our email systems relatively free of spam. The spammers are working
>> very hard and cleverly (with a lot of money behind them) to defeat these
>> organization's systems for blocking spam. For UTC's benefit, the
>> anti-spam process is automated and has worked very well. We have seen
>> *very* few actual cases of legitimate email being blocked by blacklisted
>> email systems over the many months we have been blocking spam.
>>
>> Like any provider of services, Yahoo has a responsibility to it's
>> customers to maintain it's services and this is obviously beyond
>> anything we can control. UTC is dependent upon Yahoo. MSN, Hotmail,
>> etc. just as we are with many other providers of services (technology
>> and otherwise).
>>
>> Thanks for your understanding,
>> Richard
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Kim Edward Renz wrote:
>>
>> > Okay, so how do we fix it? OneNet is not our communications system.
>> We do
>> > business with too many individuals and businesses using yahoo to say
>> they
>> > cannot contact us anymore.
>> >
>> > Please advise us of the official University course of action to rectify
>> > this situation.
>> >
>> > Thanks,
>> > Kim
>> >
>> > At 10:40 AM 12/5/2003, Richard Gambrell wrote:
>> >
>> >> Please note: Email from @yahoo.com has been "blacklisted" by the
>> >> anti-spam organizations that UTC uses to block spam. This means email
>> >> sent from @yahoo.com addresses is being automatically blocked by UTC's
>> >> email system. This may affect students and others who use Yahoo for
>> >> email.
>> >>
>> >> An easy workaround is for students (and others) to use UTC's own
>> OneNet
>> >> email system at http://onenet.utc.edu/ to send email.
>> >>
>> >> Thanks,
>> >> Richard
>> >> --
>> >> Richard L Gambrell, Director of Computing Systems and Networks
>> >> Information Technology Division, University of Tennessee at
>> Chattanooga
>> >
>> >
>> > Kim Edward Renz
>> > Patten Performances, Department 6756
>> > University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
>> > Fine Arts Center, 752 Vine Street
>> > Chattanooga, Tennessee 37403-2598
>> > Office: 423-425-4379 Facsimile: 423-425-5249
>> > [log in to unmask] www.utc.edu/finearts
>> >
>> >
>>
>> --
>> Richard L Gambrell, Director of Computing Systems and Networks
>> Information Technology Division, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
>> 103 Hunter Dept 4454, 615 McCallie Ave, Chattanooga, TN 37403-2598
>> Fax: 423-425-4150 Problems: [log in to unmask] or 423-425-4000
>> Direct phone: 423-425-5316 IT Business Office: 423-425-1755
>> Urgent/cell: 423-432-5122 Main UTC phone: 423-425-4111
>> Email: [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]
>
>
--
Richard L Gambrell, Director of Computing Systems and Networks
Information Technology Division, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
103 Hunter Dept 4454, 615 McCallie Ave, Chattanooga, TN 37403-2598
Fax: 423-425-4150 Problems: [log in to unmask] or 423-425-4000
Direct phone: 423-425-5316 IT Business Office: 423-425-1755
Urgent/cell: 423-432-5122 Main UTC phone: 423-425-4111
Email: [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]
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