[NLRS] AOL update

[Dr. Gerald N. Johnson]

Last month my main ISP switched spam filters to RedCondor. I have the 
user options for incoming filter turned to no filtering depending on 
Thurderbird to filter spam without filtering things I want. And after 
years of training its doing well. But when the ISP went to RedCondor 
they left aggressive filtering set for outgoing mails and I was getting 
several quarantined but I was able to get them released. I complained 
because the apparent filters were based on certain individual words more 
than once in the text or more than 2 links. But the quarantine message 
they sent to me had more than two links. I complained that was 
discrimination, why could their quarantine send what I wasn't allowed to 
send? I was able to reapply my other ISP making it look like my newest 
ISP so I didn't have to resubscribe to multiple mailing lists. I have 
accidentally sent a few responses lately and the outgoing filter seems 
to be more tolerant now. In my complaint I pointed out that links were a 
part of technical correspondence and critical to work products at times.

Point is an extreme spam filter setting will not accept more than one 
link and the typical original post gets out of a qth.net mailer with at 
least two links, this one has four. When included in a reply there can 
be four links per copied post plus the reply. Plus any the writer's 
include to make a point or supply an information link. Extreme spam 
filters also look for a string of to addresses such as can come from a 
mailer and figure its spam if it has more than two addressees. A 
characteristic of mailing lists that spam filters try to not allow. 
Often all the addressee or subscriber will notice is low activity while 
his local spam filter is rejecting posts causing the mailing list to do 
the unsubscribe bit.

I have taken to trimming replies (but won't this one) to get rid of the 
trailing links and trimming links to take of the http:// prefix. Its a 
sign of really dumb filter design that catches http://www..... but not 
www......com I allege those setting up filters based on text content are 
incompetent because from past experience they catch text, but don't run 
HTML to check the display, only check the HTML code but a fundamental in 
HTML is the ability to independently address screen locations and insert 
characters entirely out of order to what is seen on the screen. If 
that's not filtered, the filter is failing. If the filter picks certain 
words without looking at their context its also incompetent.

There may be an alternative to mailing lists and spam filters. I 
participate in a couple agricultural forums where a subscription is 
required to post, but anybody can read and where topics are threaded. 
One is www.allischalmers.com where the threads are displayed with the 
most recent first and talk.newagtalk/forums where there are several 
general forums and a very large group of participants. These do take 
active moderators because there are spammers joining and posting nearly 
every day with advertisements for off shore made products that don't 
pertain to the agricultural topics. I think commercial software is 
available to run such a forum, maybe even from qth.net. Both these 
forums have mechanisms for participants to notify the administrators of 
inappropriate threads.

qth.com offers mail addresses and web page space for a small cost per 
month or year, with a custom url also relatively cheaply. There the mail 
server should be list friendly. But I'm sure at a higher cost than AOL, 
GMAIL, or hotmail.

73, Jerry, K0CQ

On 6/13/2014 11:01 AM, Bruce Richardson wrote:
>
>
> Apparently the recent bounces and unsubs to/from our AOL subscribers
> wasn't a part of the DMARC deal. They just plain blocked the traffic for
> some unknown reason.  All the AOL subscribers have been resubbed via
> either "time out" or via their own action.
>
> If it happens again, I'll forward a few specific cases to our helpers at
> QSL.net.
>
> I'll stay after it.
> 73
> Bruce Richardson W9FZ
>
>
> See you at the 48th Central States VHF Society Conference, July 25-26,
> in Austin, TX  Just go to http://www.csvhfs.org
>
>
> ______________________________________________________________
> NLRS mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/nlrs
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:NLRS at mailman.qth.net
>
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
>
>