Verizon email users

[Hasse Admin Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Hasse]

Email from Europe

It is nice, Carl, that you got some email from Scandinavia to your Verizon email box - let us hope that nothing valuable is among the many that don't come through. The problem is that one cannot be nearly sure that all email comes through! Since Verizon adapted the censorship policy I have tried to convince them that email from Finlander is no spam. They did something but now some one email out of 40 seems to go through.

I really wonder how many would accept the same in traditional (snail-) mailing? That every sender of a postcard would have to convince the recipients post office that he is not sending "spam"?

Even though some email goes through to some Verizon customers occasionally I have to stress that it is a censorship.

I just tried to send Carl an email from two different email accounts -- both came back as a boomerang, fast and as clockwork.

Hasse

[Nicholas Registered Find all posts View Profile Close Nicholas]

More about Verizon

As a Verizon customer who needed DSL, and could not have it installed by other reputable companies, we are without an option for our business. Verizon DSL, or back to dial-up.

And, as our business is primarily with people in other countries--and e-mail is the most important form of communication for our busiess--I have had several very 'warm' discussions with Verizon about their blocking e-mail to us from abroad.

Their repsonse: Please add the names of people you wish to receive mail from to your 'White List' and their mail will come through.

Fine, provided that I KNOW each person who will send me mail. The fact is, it is the people whom I do not yet know who are the ones I need to receive mail from...they are my potential, new clients.

And, the White List concept--at least as Verizon has set it up--is not prrfect. My colleague in Japan --with whom I exchange e-mail often--still must send mail to me through my:

- Hotmail.com account

-Google.mail. com account

-Yahoo.com account

(ALL of his mail arrvies to these accounts without any difficulty..it just means I must take time to check them all.)

One thing that those of us who must have Verzion service can do, is to collect our mail directy from our webmail accounts. By doing this, there is a good chance that you will be able to remove real mail from the SPAM folder or Trash, and prevent Verizon from rejecting at least some of your mail. (This is also a handy way to clear mail that you do NOT want, before you click on 'Get Mail' and wind up downloading real spam.)

By the way, I do receive mail from many other countries, without any problem. In fact, the number of e-mails I receive from Nigeria--offering me millions, if I will just send along my bank information--is staggering. ;-)

Hope this helps...

Nicholas

[Jaska Sarell Registered Find all posts View Profile Close Jaska Sarell]

Verizon = Very Jong ?

Is Verizon by any chance led by Kim Jong Il?
The policy at least sounds similar except that he wouldn't let anything go out either. Perhaps a tiny concession for other shareholders?

BTW. I recently decided to pay small extra to my ISP for spam filtering (they use SpamAssassin), which seems to work just fine. After adding a few allowed senders (news or similar mass email, which easily are considered) and receivers (postlists), all mail in their Spam Box has really been junk. Less than 10% comes through though - spammers' strategies change all the time.
Just before that I analyzed the headers of about 200 spam mails, and identified the originating IP address owners with Who Is servers like RIPE, LACNIC, ARIN. Three topmost countries China, USA and Korea (South) were responsible for 40% of spam. Others came far behind and the small sample doesn't qualify to put them in any order. Some Europeans seemed to be DSL customers, meaning probably that there's some security leak in their ISP's system. The sender addresses, of course, were all faked - they tell nothing about the real origin. Latest two that came through (the same "message") had some verizon.net address, but they really from the same source in Canada.

Send Verizon back to the USSR, where it belongs!
OK, it doesn't exist any more - to Pyongyang then.

Jaska

[Elaine Goren Registered Find all posts View Profile Close Elaine Goren]

more about Verizon

From today's Providence Journal newspaper

Verizon considers refunds in blocked e-mail lawsuit by Maryclaire Dale, Associated Press

"Philadelphia---Verizon Communications Inc. is proposing refunds to Internet customers who found legitimate e-mail from friends and businsses blocked by the company's spam filters.

In announcing a tentative settlement of a class-action lawsuit, Verizon said it has since refined it's junk e-mail blockers to reduce such mistakes.

Verizon has blocked e-mail altogether from certain overseas Internet service providers---mostly from Europe and Asia---and failed to properly handle complaints, said Philadelphia attorney Michael Boni.

He said that Verizon servers could not handle an increase in e-mail volume---and spam---before the 2004 holiday season. so the company decided to block e-mail from certain geographic areas.

Verizon spokeswoman Bobbi Henson, however, said the filters were not designed to target any such regions.

The proposed settlement, if approved by the Los Angeles judge overseeing the case, covers business and residential customers who had broadband or dial-up service from Oct. 1 2004 to May 31 2005.

Customers could potentially get awards of $3.50 per month or up to $28, plus any cancellations fees charged for dropping their service over missing e-mail.

Verizon has notified customers about the claim process. Information is also available at http://www.emailblockingsettlement.com"

This doesn't sound very generous to me!
Elaine

[Hasse Admin Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Hasse]

Price of censurship

So now we have a price on and of censorship, 28$. But - doesn't this mean that Verizon can continue with their I suppose illegal policy? And after this decision supposedly other companies and organisations in the US also may censor email they are supposed forward to their customers?

What I don't understand is why Verizon doesn't filter spams like all other ISPs do? Capacity problems? Poor technology in use? An email vendor should forward all the email and filter out only the spams and virus emails! Since they can do it here in Europe inspite of heavy bombardment of spams and virus email they should be able to do it in the US. And - I'm fairly sure that the amount of email served per server is in the same magnitude as for Verizon!

I'm still wondering how it can be that ordinary people in a democracy can stand censorship!

All forms of mail, snailmail to email, are based upon the idea that the distribution system can relay the message from the sender to the receiver using transport agents who must not interfer with the content of the mail. Interference, ie. censorship, is something that takes place in totalitarian states or states at war.

[Jaska Sarell Registered Find all posts View Profile Close Jaska Sarell]

Just looked at the SpamAssassin site (the spam filter software my ISP uses). It's free, but can be installed only in several Linux distributions and with some tricks in Mac OSX. Apparently V uses M, another monopol.
Their tendency is to never ask customers what they want, but tell them what they are allowed to want
Exactly like in North Korea.

Jaska