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LOST EMAIL SYNDROME
Imagine that the word 'Spam' which once meant a meaty food
product, now, when mentioned, brings up the image of tons of
junk emails coming into your mailbox... What is Spam? Its
any email sent to you that you didn't ask for.. That's my
simple definition of it. Many of these emails are vulgar,
contain malicious cookies, just plain dumb, and the thing I
hate worse is they can be repetitive.... Jeeze, please just
ask me once to buy some breast enlarging technique or to
transfer my mortgage. Ask me 10 times, and I get motivated
to write an article like this.... Been asked to help move
monies from Nigeria lately?
Well the real reason I'm writing this is to alert you to a
new, and ever growing, LOST EMAIL SYNDROME...
Have you ever emailed anyone and not got a reply? Anyone
ever tell you they emailed you, but you never got it? Why is
that? Spam is getting to be a big reason. Any good Internet
Service Provider (ISP) will filter out a ton of spam before
it gets to you... There may be a real, active spammer using
the same ISP as you are, and thus you might be on someone's
spam list because of that. Less likely but certainly a
possibility is that those spam filter programs may make the
mistake of thinking your email is spam....
Where does spam come from? Spam can come from a company next
door. You've seen the emails (spam) trying to sell you email
lists haven't you? "Buy a million email accounts to sell
your products to..." Well, if you try that, any reputable
ISP you are sending from, will shut you down; fast. And many
of the ISPs that receive your spam will ban you forever from
sending them any more. For that reason, a lot of it comes
from hijacked mail servers... In other words, the smarter
spammers are using unsecured mail servers around the world
to relay all their spam through. Most of these servers are
now, today, in third world countries since they do not have
the technology or resources to make their servers more
secure.
So what does any of this have to do with the National
Speleological Society - Cave Diving Section? Plenty, since
much of the communications taking place today is done via
email... from around the world! Your online memberships,
orders, donations all utilize email, and there is a ton of
inquiries to NSS-CDS directors and project managers. On
occasion I hear someone complaining they haven't gotten a
response to emails send to someone at the NSS-CDS. I can't
explain them all off on the spam filters... but keep in mind
that may be a reason... sometimes....
If you think you might be on a spam list, or can't seem to
get a response from the NSS-CDS, let's work out a system for
resolving that. Here's how: Email the NSS-CDS Webmaster a
message mentioning this concern to
Webmaster@NSSCDS.org.
This email goes to two different people, so maybe one
of them will get through. Once received, the source (ISP) of
your emails can be determined. It is an Internet Protocol
Number (IP#) in the e-mail's source. With that IP#, the spam
lists can be searched, and if found, removed. Yeah, we can't
guarantee it won't be added back, but usually the spammer
has moved on to another mail server...
Now I could have emailed this to you... but since you didn't
ask, it would have been spam, right?
NSS-CDS Webmaster
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