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Connecting families, communities and businesses since 1997 |
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USFamily Spam Filter System
USFamily.Net Spam Filter Features:
Free and automatic to all USFamily.Net Users
While the Spam Filter has been activated for everyone, anyone can turn the Spam Filter On or Off as desired at http://www.usfamily.net/usr-spamfilter.html
You can view your mailbox including all Spam from the last 30 days at http://webmail.usfamily.net.
Spam is located in the "Bulk" folder.Any rare legitimate email sender who may be inadvertently screened by the Spam Filter is notified immediately and automatically by return email and instructed how to resolve the problem and reach your mailbox with their email.
The Spam Filter is self regulating and our on-staff email guru is always monitoring the Spam that is filtered to improve the system and release any occasional emails that are not actual Spam.
USFamily.net Spam Filter Information
We have seen an alarming increase in the number of unsolicited commercial emails over the
past several months. The number of people now in the business of "harvesting"
email addresses and re-selling them in the form of
lists has grown geometrically. While we take a zero-tolerance attitude towards spam
originating from our purview, there are many ISP's who simply ignore spam reports (and/or
profit from the spam) that we, and most other
reputable ISP's, pass on.
Added to that mix, the number of Email servers online also continues to grow at a
geometric rate. In and of itself, that is of little concern. The majority (by count) of
the new servers being added are based upon some variation of WindowsNT. Again, in and of
itself, that SHOULD be of little concern. Unfortunately, Microsoft chose to make it easy
to set up an email server that is fundamentally not secure, thus very easy for spammers to
take advantage of as a relay device.
Of course, those problematic servers are propogating around the world. Most of the spam
received here is relayed through China, Taiwan, Canada, and, to a lesser extent, through
various European countries such as Italy, France, and the UK, even though most of it
actually originates in the US. Spam enforcement outside of the US is spotty at best.
With that background in mind, USFamily.net has implemented a spam filtering system. We
realize it is impossible to catch all the spam, but hope that we can substantially reduce
the amount that our customers are likely to experience. For the spam that does slip
through, we would strongly encourage you to continue to forward it (with full headers) to
"abuse@usfamily.net", as we will continue to monitor and refine the filters
based upon your input.
The flip side is that there will undoubtedly be a small number of emails that are detained
by our spam filters that are NOT spam. For example, many of the school (K-12) email
servers are based upon a Mac implementation that was/is not secure (similar to the
problems described above with many WindowsNT systems). As a result, a number of these
servers were (or, ARE being) exploited by spammers, and, therefore, are listed as spam
sources. We are attempting to identify those that have been fixed so that we can remove
them from our filters.
In an effort to minimize any downside effect, we will automatically attempt to
notify all senders when we detain an email and give them a link to appeal. We expect very
few spammers to even bother to try to appeal, mostly because they generally do not provide
a working return envelope address.
You have the option to totally disable/enable the spam filter at any time through your
account administration web page:
http://www.usfamily.net/usr-spamfilter.html
Or, you can, at any time, go in via our Spamviewer and view the entire contents of your
mailbox, recent spam included. You can view your mailbox including all Spam from the last
30 days at http://webmail.usfamily.net.
Please forward any feedback to abuse@usfamily.net.
We welcome both positive and negative feedback .