Mail & News Items

[Peter Paddison]

In the last two dsys, the number of junk mails has escalated (for me) and at
the same time, the news items do not download at all within the normal
timescale, and indeed I have tired of waiting and disconnected.

Is there a connection between the two?

Peter Paddison

[Russell Hafter News]

Post by Peter Paddison
In the last two dsys, the number of junk mails has
escalated (for me) and at the same time, the news items
do not download at all within the normal timescale, and
indeed I have tired of waiting and disconnected.
Is there a connection between the two?

No.

The news situation has been publicised by Paul Vigay, though
it could have been done better, IMHO, such as by a brief
newsletter to all Orpheus Users.

The quantity of spam coming through my Orpheus addresses
these days is about the same as through two other domains
that are not Orpheus-hosted, and do not offer any spam
filtering, while Orpheus does.

Until about a week or so ago Orpheus produced about 10% of
the spam the others produced.

I suspect something has gone wrong with the spam filters
that Orpheus uses.

Of the 5 e-mails currently in my spam box, three have
"Cialis" spelled correctly in their subject line. One came
via Orpheus, but there is nothing in the headers to show
that it has been through the spam filters.

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Peter Paddison
In the last two dsys, the number of junk mails has escalated (for me) and
at the same time, the news items do not download at all within the normal
timescale, and indeed I have tired of waiting and disconnected.
Is there a connection between the two?

No. No connection at all. News and email are two completely different
servers. The news server was subject to abuse a couple of weeks ago,
resulting in us exceeding our monthly quota of bandwidth.

Spam is a never-ending battle and we're always looking to improve the
service, but we can't make the filters too strict or they'll run the risk
of preventing legitimate emails get through - and personally I'd rather
receive 100 spam messages than run the risk of missing a single important,
genuine email.

Unfortunately, the more intelligent our spam filters get, the better and
more devious ways spammers find to get around them, so it's a never-ending
game of cat and mouse. Suffice to say, that we're always looking to improve
the spam filtering without making it *too* sensitive.

Paul

[Russell Hafter News]

In article

Post by Paul Vigay
Unfortunately, the more intelligent our spam filters get,
the better and more devious ways spammers find to get
around them, so it's a never-ending game of cat and
mouse. Suffice to say, that we're always looking to
improve the spam filtering without making it *too*
sensitive.

Most of the much increased spam I get via Orpheus does not
seem to have gone through your spam filters at all.

No headers such as the following at all:

X-orpheus-MailScanner: Found to be clean
X-orpheus-MailScanner-SpamCheck: not spam, SpamAssassin (not
cached,
score=4.5, required 5, URIBL_BLACK 3.00, URIBL_OB_SURBL
1.50)
X-orpheus-MailScanner-SpamScore: 4

(The above taken from an advert for WonderCum) and came via
vila.orpheusnet.co.uk and orac.orpheusnet.co.uk

Two e-mails with subject "HSBC Green option for current
accounts" have no such headers, nor do plenty of others.
They came via dayna.orpheusnet.co.uk

Looking further through the spam, gan.orpheusnet.co.uk seems
to be doing spam scanning, though perhaps not very
effectively, as Subject "descent reinforcements" which is a
Chinese stock scam e-mail rates a spam score of zero!

Found another spam that came via jenna.orpheusnet.co.uk, and
was spam scanned.

Dayna does not seem to do spam scans, though, at all, even
though at least one of them purports to come from an
@dayna.orpheusnet.co.uk e-mail address.

[John Nolan]

Post by Paul Vigay
Spam is a never-ending battle and we're always looking to improve the
service, but we can't make the filters too strict or they'll run the risk
of preventing legitimate emails get through - and personally I'd rather
receive 100 spam messages than run the risk of missing a single important,
genuine email.

I've had a huge now of NewsArts starting something like

MI5 Persecution

Is this possibly something that could be filtered out ?

John N.