Stumble over an unfamiliar term? You might find it in the newsletter glossary (or suggest that we add it.)
The standard rate for a personal FAX number is $9.50/month,
or $7.50/month when combined with other services totalling $10/month
or more.
or free with any business DSL account that's charged at at least
$95/month. (This includes existing accounts.)
Note: personal FAX numbers do not qualify for other discounts.
Verisign reluctantly complied with this request. Since then,
though, they have been waging a fairly active battle in the press (at
least within certain technical and administrative circles), muddying
the waters along the way. Typically Verisign portrays the issue as
revolving around their "SiteFinder" web site, and generally refers to
the "SiteFinder" service as what's being discussed. It's important to
bear in mind, though, that SiteFinder is merely a web site, one that
can be operated without the changes Verisign made. The controversy is
not about running that web site: it is about Verisign using their
access to the domain registry database to illegitimately redirect
traffic to that web site. Verisign also clouds the issue by insisting
that the change they made is technically sound. And that's true. But
one can do lots of technically sound things that are wrong (as in
"right" vs "wrong"). For example, spam (unsolicited email) is
delivered via technically sound methods.
For those 90% of you who are not yet using the email filters, you
are encouraged to check out this capability (as well as the webmail
interface). Go to
http://webmail.mv.net to set up
filters or other actions to apply to the mail you receive.
We've also set up a Usenet newsgroup
mv.forum.email as an area to
discuss email handling, including mail filtering.
We are still working on more advanced mail filtering capabilities-
future newsletters will bring you information as it develops.
We have taken some action to help reduce the bad-bounce problem.
We now apply spam filtering on mail to nonexistent domains just before
we would bounce it. If it looks like spam, we don't send the bounce.
This has at least two effects: it reduces the load on our servers that
have to send the bounces, and it reduces the effect on the unfortunate
forged targets of those bounces.
We assume that most of you aren't interested in stealing or
trafficking in stolen wares. But we also bet that some of you are
nevertheless interested in peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing technologies.
The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has come up with a page
entitled "How Not To Get Sued By The RIAA For File-Sharing
(And Other Ideas to Avoid Being Treated Like a Criminal)".
(You can get to it at
http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/howto-notgetsued.php .) Here
you will find a number of interesting links, including
help to avoid accidentally setting yourself up to share
files without knowing it; discussions of subpoena actions;
and thoughts about ways to advance technology without hurting artists.
Personal FAX numbers available
Would you like an incoming FAX number that doesn't tie up your phone
line? MV is now offering a personal FAX number service. You get a
unique telephone number in Manchester, NH, and when somebody sends you a
FAX to that number, it's delivered to you as a TIF (tagged image
format) attachment to an email message. You can use our email filtering
facilities to deliver that message to a specific folder or to another
address if you wish.
Note also: personal FAX numbers are currently for incoming FAXes only.
Update on Verisign wildcard DNS issues
In last month's newsletter we reported on a
controversial episode wherein Verisign used their control over the .COM
and .NET domain spaces to redirect queries for unregistered domains to
a web site that they operated. This move was designed to allow
Verisign to capitalize on accesses to domains that did not exist-- as
when somebody made a typographical error, or when somebody simply made
a guess about a domain name they were looking for. Verisign's web
site, called "SiteFinder", included facilities to allow the user to
search for a site with a similar name, or conduct other searches.
Verisign would make money by, for example, selling ad space on the
SiteFinder web site. The bottom line with this maneuver was, indeed,
all about the bottom line: Verisign's goal was to make money off of
these accesses. Many (most) people, believing that Verisign misused
their responsibility to run the .COM and .NET domains in a circumspect
manner, cried foul. ICANN (the International Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers, see
http://www.icann.org/, the
organization which currently has oversight over the domain name
system, agreed. It issued this
order instructing Verisign to remove the wildcard entries until
the matter could be further studied.
About spam filtering
We continue to receive positive feedback on our email filtering
capabilities. Surprisingly, though, only about 10% of you have
enabled email filters. Of that 10%, most people have set up very
basic filters, rejecting SPAM based on some very fundamental choices
that we provide. Even so, within that 10%, our statistics indicate
that approximately 35% of messages are discarded as SPAM, and another
11% of message are automatically filed into "caught spam" folders.
This means that with only very minimal setup, people using our filters
are filtering out nearly 50% of the email being sent to them. Those
who spend a little time setting up more complex filters are likely
to see even better results.
Some tweaks in email handling
Spam and unwanted email continues to be a growing problem affecting
more than just individual mailboxes. For every increase in spam that
you see, our mail servers are affected even more. We see increasing
amounts of spam destined for nonexistent mailboxes, as spammers try
more and more combinations of letters in hopes of finding a valid
email address. Most of this spam has a forged return address, causing
even more troubles when the mail server attempts to return a message to
the sender. Furthermore, batches of spam messages tend to have
fake return addresses with valid domain names (such as aol.com,
yahoo.com, hotmail.com, and the like). Mail systems for those domains
become secondary victims as bounce messages pile into them from
spam send around the world.
EFF: How not to get sued
Most of you have probably read about the RIAA (Recording Industry
Association of America) serving up lawsuits to many people that it
believes are trading in bootleg audio or video works. Some people
believe that illegal trading of copyrighted works is partly a
side-effect of an industry failing to keep up with technology, and
failing to provide any realistic distribution/reward system for
artistic works in this networked age.
Your feedback?
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If so, please either: