Valerie Stewart

-----Original Message-----
From: The Internet TourBus - A virtual tour of cyberspace
[mailto:TOURBUS@...] On Behalf Of Bob Rankin
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2001 11:01 PM
To: TOURBUS@...
Subject: TOURBUS - 15 May 01 - The End of Spam?

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Spam Filtering: It Works!
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In the last issue I mentioned BrightMail, a company offering a spam
filtering system that's being used by service providers such as
Earthlink/Mindspring, AT&T Worldnet, and others.

I asked for feedback from people who use the Brightmail/Spaminator
service and I got lots of it. The almost universal response was that
spam levels went down dramatically after switching on the filter, and
that instances of the filter catching non-spam emails was very rare.
Here is some of the feedback I received:

- I activated the spam filter and it immediately reduced the spam.
- To say the level of SPAM went down with BrightMail is an
understatement. It almost disappeared.
- Only the occasional spam gets through now.
- I was afraid Spaminator would filter out mail from mailing lists
I'm on (such as this), but it recognized them as desired.
- It even blocked the HaHa virus.
- Now I don't worry about spam at all.

If your ISP offers the Brightmail/Spaminator filter give it a try. It
seems to suppress almost ALL unwanted spam and viruses; and it gives
you the ability to review the filtered messages. If your ISP DOESN'T
offer the Brightmail service, tell them you want it or switch to one
that does.

<A href="http://www.earthlink.net">
Earthlink - http://www.earthlink.net </A>

<A href="http://www.att.net">
AT&T WorldNet - http://www.att.net </A>

<A href="http://www.hiwaay.net">
Hiwaay - http://www.hiwaay.net </A>

The Beginning of the End?

Now this is VERY encouraging news to me. It seems that we have some
technology at hand that comes very close to solving the spam problem
entirely. If a majority of ISP's adopted Brightmail or something
similar, it could signal the end of spam.

It eliminates the spammers' complaint that ISP's who filter are
violating their "free speech" rights, because users decide whether or
not to use the filter. It also eliminates the need to track down and
punish spammers. What could be worse than being ignored?

And it would make anti-spam laws completely unnecessary. I have never
believed that involving lawyers and legislators in the process would
do anything to solve the spam problem. Technology created the
problem, and technology seems to be solving it - hooray!

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