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"Dennis " wrote in message
...
"J&KCopeland" wrote in message
news

"Dennis " wrote in message
...
"Scratch Ankle Wood" wrote in message
s.com...
The other day I had one of my people stuck with a 2 1/2 download
time
for
email on her computer because of viruses (the first wave) that had
come
in
starting about Labor Day. All from one Road Runner Indianapolis
account.
Her ISP's response when called was to say it was just spam and he
could
change there email address to solve it. Interesting response I
thought.
Wonder why his business isn't flourishing. Actually, he better than
the
other local providers and none are doing well. Anyway, one email to
abuse
at Road Runner solved the problem.

The numerous emails I'm getting don't appear to be from any
real source. When asked about putting virus filtering software
on their mail servers, my ISP (Patriot Media in NJ) actually
said "no one is using that kind of thing or else there wouldn't
be all the viruses spreading around the world." Needless to
say I was shocked by this logic.

Dennis Vogel

No one does it for a reason.

With thousands of end users, it's extremely difficult to create a
general
application rule that wouldn't supress legitmate eMail for someone. I
have
a rule deleting everything that has "Microsoft" in the subject line, but
if
I worked for Microsoft or one of it umpteen vendors, I might find that
particular rule, totally unacceptable.

How about an email that contains a virus? Those should be filtered
by an ISP.

Once new virus configurations are well, known, I'm reasonably certain that
some (many, most) ISP's might well do extactly that. But someone, somewhere
has got to get copies of the infected code, break the code down to locate
and identify exactly the code sequence that's the culprit, and then issue
"definations" of that code sequence, and the administrators have to download
and install the new "definations". Norton, McAfee and Dr Solomon make a lot
of money doing exactly that. While this process is going on, a malicious
virus can spread world wide, in a matter of MINUTES.

In fact, a good ISP will let individual users configure
their own filters.

Are we talking apples and oranges here? I know of no ISP that will let
end-users anywhere near their news servers. Normally, end-users have
read-only access to the servers, and any filters and/or specific (anti-spam)
programs are applied by the individual's boxes to incoming mail. (Perhaps
there are ISP's that allow end-users to specifically configure their
individual accounts on the servers, but it sounds like a great way for
someone to screw up their mail and then blame the ISP, and since each user
already has the power to create their own rules under any modern newsreader,
I don't see where this would actually help much. BTW. The "bandwidth" has
already been "chewed" up by the time the messages reach the server.

Look, my personal "Microsoft" worm count is now passing 200, so I'm
completely in tune with the frustration expressed. And I've no doubt that
some ISP administrators are probably manually deleting this incoming
messages off their servers, like crazy.

Good for them!

No need for everyone to have the same filters.
This isn't a difficult problem to solve. And it's in the ISP's interest
to do this because it is their bandwidth that is getting chewed up
with this crap.

I don't normally eMail executable files, but I have, on occasion
forwarded
a
particular file to a relative.

Even the multi-address rules of some ISP's can cause problems. My
daughter,
a manager, regularily sends out bluk eMails to 22 regionally dispersed
employees.

Much better for end users to learn the rather simple rule, do NOT open
any
attachments unless you know exactly who sent it and why.

Yeah but there's a little problem. When I shut off my computer, the
email backs up on the ISPs mail server. When it gets full, valid
email gets bounced. Overnight is sufficient to clog my mailbox.

Hmmmm. To be tactless, either your ISP allocates an extremely small amount
of space per user OR you're getting helluva lot of large eMail messages.
(BTW, I know this can happen. My BIL regularily sends and receives CAD
files and those suckers are HUGE. He had to request, and was granted,
additional storage space by his ISP. My wife once send a large uncompressed
bunch of pictures, to several relatives. I was surprised that my ISP would
let them out. But the relatives, especially the ones still on dialup
weren't happy at all.)

Dennis Vogel

James...