Good news regarding spammers......

[Paul Vigay]

We've been upgrading the servers to cope with increase load and spam
attacks and I've just received the following feedback from my sysadmin.....

"The new server is fantastic. It is hardly breaking a sweat as it deals
with the constant spammer connections. Load average barely hits 0.17 as it
fends off all the spammers we block via DNS and by the emails it halts due
to spam or a virus. I upped the ante and installed Pyzor
(http://pyzor.sourceforge.net/) to help identify more spam and the server
is just purring along as before."

So, things looking good for Orpheus subscribers, and bad for spammers! :-)

Paul

[Tennant Stuart]

Post by Paul Vigay
We've been upgrading the servers to cope with increase load and spam
attacks and I've just received the following feedback from my
sysadmin.....
"The new server is fantastic. It is hardly breaking a sweat as it deals
with the constant spammer connections. Load average barely hits 0.17 as it
fends off all the spammers we block via DNS and by the emails it halts due
to spam or a virus. I upped the ante and installed Pyzor
(http://pyzor.sourceforge.net/) to help identify more spam and the server
is just purring along as before."

Well done. Does 0.17 mean it could handle six times as much spam?

Post by Paul Vigay
So, things looking good for Orpheus subscribers, and bad for spammers! :-)

What's the convenientest way to renew, when you don't take credit cards?


--> STOP PRESS <--

Not feeling so happy with all these authentication errors :(



Tennant

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Tennant Stuart
Well done. Does 0.17 mean it could handle six times as much spam?

Load is a weird thing. Anything less than 1.00 is good. Anything up to
about 3.00 is relatively ok. Anything above 10.00 is bad!

Sometimes the old Argonet server used to hit 200.00 - and then keel over
and die (usually at 5.30pm on a Friday!)

Post by Tennant Stuart
What's the convenientest way to renew, when you don't take credit cards?

A cheque would be fine. Or direct electronic payment from the bank. Email

Post by Tennant Stuart
Not feeling so happy with all these authentication errors :(

Authentication where? Connecting in the first place, or fetching mail etc.
Is this a new development? I've been having positive feedback from the past
few months, so I was hoping all the initial dialup problems (which
unfortunately, generally only seem to affect Voyager) were a thing of the
past. :-(

[Mr C Price]

I have to add my voice to the others. Since the new servers came in my spam
"count" has been zero.

Pity really, I REALLY REALLY missed the Viagra peddlars, the "Nigerian Scam"
emails and the offers of sex from Russian "laydeez" :-)

Chris.

[Russell Hafter News]

In article

Post by Mr C Price
I have to add my voice to the others. Since the new
servers came in my spam "count" has been zero.
Pity really, I REALLY REALLY missed the Viagra peddlars,
the "Nigerian Scam" emails and the offers of sex from
Russian "laydeez" :-)

You should be so lucky!

I still get some half-a-dozen a day.

[Alan Griffin]

Post by Russell Hafter News

Post by Mr C Price
Pity really, I REALLY REALLY missed the Viagra peddlars,
the "Nigerian Scam" emails and the offers of sex from
Russian "laydeez" :-)

You should be so lucky!
I still get some half-a-dozen a day.

So do I!
Alan Griffin

[Dave Stratford]

Post by Alan Griffin

Post by Russell Hafter News

Post by Mr C Price
Pity really, I REALLY REALLY missed the Viagra peddlars,
the "Nigerian Scam" emails and the offers of sex from
Russian "laydeez" :-)

You should be so lucky!
I still get some half-a-dozen a day.

So do I!
Alan Griffin

Half a dozen! You lucky lucky ... cough cough ... I'm getting (what feels
like) hundreds a week!

Dave

[Russell Hafter News]

Post by Dave Stratford

Post by Russell Hafter News
In article
Russell Hafter News

Post by Mr C Price
Pity really, I REALLY REALLY missed the Viagra
peddlars, the "Nigerian Scam" emails and the offers
of sex from Russian "laydeez" :-)

You should be so lucky! I still get some half-a-dozen
a day.

So do I! Alan Griffin

Half a dozen! You lucky lucky ... cough cough ... I'm
getting (what feels like) hundreds a week!

That was just the Orpheus spam.

The feeling I get is that Orpheus does remove significant
quantities of spam, because I get more via other ISPs.

Also perhaps significant:

Orpheus hosts 2 domains for me, but I have four others, each
hosted with a different ISP. For 2 of them I have the e-mail
forwarded to a POP box nothing to do with the hosting ISP.
My Belgium walking holiday mail is (usually) forwarded to a
box at Claranet, my cycling holiday mail (usually) to a box
at Plusnet.

When away from the office, though, I usually adjust the
forwarding of both temporarily to Orpheus.

Neither Clara nor Plusnet (both accounts there are 'free')
do spam filteringon my mail and subjectively, I do get more
spam through Clara and Plusnet than through Orpheus.

[Tennant Stuart]

Post by Russell Hafter News
In article

Post by Mr C Price
I have to add my voice to the others. Since the new
servers came in my spam "count" has been zero.
Pity really, I REALLY REALLY missed the Viagra peddlars,
the "Nigerian Scam" emails and the offers of sex from
Russian "laydeez" :-)

You should be so lucky!
I still get some half-a-dozen a day.

Yeah - I got two newsletters (welcomed), a failed delivery from
a spammer using my name, two adverts for enlarging my penis, an
opportunity to get boys stuff, and a stocks enticement. Orpheus
should maintain a maildrop for us to forward all the crap to.


Tennant

[Paul Vigay]

Yeah - I got two newsletters (welcomed), a failed delivery from a spammer
using my name, two adverts for enlarging my penis, an opportunity to get
boys stuff, and a stocks enticement. Orpheus should maintain a maildrop
for us to forward all the crap to.

To be honest, I don't need any more junk to be sent to me. We get over 15MB
a day sent to us (my sysadmin and I) automatically from the mail server
logs.

Unless something nasty happens to all the spammers we'll never eliminate
spam altogether, so those of you getting none are lucky. If we get rid of
more than about 95% of it, we run the risk of accidentally blocking genuine
mails, which I regard as unacceptible. This is why I'd prefer people to
receive a minute amount of spam rather than none at all. It's a weighing
act really.

There is no filter that can get rid of all spam and some will always creep
through. At least the new servers are now coping with the load with hardly
a sweat so at least mail delivery shouldn't slow down when we're hit with a
huge spam wave - I think it's zapping around 150,000 an hour or something
daft at the moment.

Personally, I'd like to so something nasty to the spammers in the first
place so that we could eliminate them hitting the server in the first
place, but an average of 95% blocking rate is probably the best we can hope
for in terms of actually eliminating it from getting through to you the
subscribers.

[Tennant Stuart]

Post by Paul Vigay

Orpheus should maintain a maildrop for us to forward all the crap to.

To be honest, I don't need any more junk to be sent to me. We get over
15MB a day sent to us (my sysadmin and I) automatically from the mail
server logs.
Unless something nasty happens to all the spammers we'll never eliminate
spam altogether, so those of you getting none are lucky. If we get rid
of more than about 95% of it, we run the risk of accidentally blocking
genuine mails, which I regard as unacceptible. This is why I'd prefer
people to receive a minute amount of spam rather than none at all. It's
a weighing act really.
There is no filter that can get rid of all spam and some will always
creep through. At least the new servers are now coping with the load
with hardly a sweat so at least mail delivery shouldn't slow down when
we're hit with a huge spam wave - I think it's zapping around 150,000 an
hour or something daft at the moment.

No - what you do is set up an inbox, that isn't *you*. A bot examines the
mail looking for items sent by more than one Orpheus subscriber, and adds
them to the banned list. This turns your customers into a super-filter.


Tennant

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Tennant Stuart
No - what you do is set up an inbox, that isn't *you*. A bot examines the
mail looking for items sent by more than one Orpheus subscriber, and adds
them to the banned list. This turns your customers into a super-filter.

No. That wouldn't work. The whole point is that it would need to be
examined manually. We've got automatic spam filters which get rid of 95% of
spam. The rest is too tricky to detect automatically without running the
risk of deleting genuine emails.

Therefore, we couldn't run a bot to automatically scan emails sent to us,
because presumably they'd be the ones that have already got past the 95%
spam filter, so we'd have to scan them manually.

Unfortunately we can't really rely on people emailing us files either
because unless people know *precisely* what they're doing, emails received
this end might not be spam, as they'll come from a legitimate user (ie.
they'll have your own headers on, having been bounced or forwarded from
YOUR email account, hence will technically no longer be spam.

Hope you understand this subtle, but very important difference - it's a bit
difficult to explain.

[Tennant Stuart]

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Tennant Stuart
No - what you do is set up an inbox, that isn't *you*. A bot examines
the mail looking for items sent by more than one Orpheus subscriber,
and adds them to the banned list. This turns your customers into a
super-filter.

No. That wouldn't work. The whole point is that it would need to be
examined manually. We've got automatic spam filters which get rid of 95% of
spam. The rest is too tricky to detect automatically without running the
risk of deleting genuine emails.
Therefore, we couldn't run a bot to automatically scan emails sent to us,
because presumably they'd be the ones that have already got past the 95%
spam filter, so we'd have to scan them manually.
Unfortunately we can't really rely on people emailing us files either
because unless people know *precisely* what they're doing, emails received
this end might not be spam, as they'll come from a legitimate user (ie.
they'll have your own headers on, having been bounced or forwarded from
YOUR email account, hence will technically no longer be spam.
Hope you understand this subtle, but very important difference - it's a bit
difficult to explain.

Isn't there another way to send spam to an inbox without changing it
in any way, for example as an attatchment?


Tennant

[Richard Travers]

Post by Mr C Price
Pity really, I REALLY REALLY missed the Viagra peddlars, the "Nigerian
Scam" emails and the offers of sex from Russian "laydeez" :-)

Don't worry, Chris. There are always going to be the odd one or two that
slip through. ;-)

R

[Tennant Stuart]

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Tennant Stuart
Well done. Does 0.17 mean it could handle six times as much spam?

Load is a weird thing. Anything less than 1.00 is good. Anything up to
about 3.00 is relatively ok. Anything above 10.00 is bad!

Oohh.

Post by Paul Vigay
Sometimes the old Argonet server used to hit 200.00 - and then keel over
and die (usually at 5.30pm on a Friday!)

Ilg.

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Tennant Stuart
What's the convenientest way to renew, when you don't take credit cards?

A cheque would be fine. Or direct electronic payment from the bank. Email

Went to the village bank today, and they said they charge £25 to transfer
money to another bank account - looks like I'll have to send a cheque.

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Tennant Stuart
Not feeling so happy with all these authentication errors :(

Authentication where? Connecting in the first place, or fetching mail
etc. Is this a new development? I've been having positive feedback from
the past few months, so I was hoping all the initial dialup problems
(which unfortunately, generally only seem to affect Voyager) were a
thing of the past. :-(

So did I, but it went all wobbly yesterday. Unless I'm going barmy, the
clock always used to stop during authentication at about 6 seconds, and
then once fully connected it leapt to 12 seconds and tic-tocked along.

But yesterday the clock just kept right on going through authentication
yet surfing wasn't possible, then at about 100 seconds it closed down.

Orpheus kept doing that until around 7pm, when it suddenly cleared.


Tennant

[Russell Hafter News]

Post by Tennant Stuart

Post by Paul Vigay
A cheque would be fine. Or direct electronic payment

Went to the village bank today, and they said they charge
£25 to transfer money to another bank account - looks
like I'll have to send a cheque.

That would be for a CHAPS (same day) transfer.

If you use BACS (accessible through on-line and telephone
banking) there is normally no charge.

[Tennant Stuart]

Post by Russell Hafter News

Post by Tennant Stuart

Post by Paul Vigay
A cheque would be fine. Or direct electronic payment

Went to the village bank today, and they said they charge
£25 to transfer money to another bank account - looks
like I'll have to send a cheque.

That would be for a CHAPS (same day) transfer.
If you use BACS (accessible through on-line and telephone
banking) there is normally no charge.

So if I ask the bank to take their time, there'll be no charge?


Tennant

[Russell Hafter News]

Post by Tennant Stuart

Post by Russell Hafter News
In article

Post by Tennant Stuart

Post by Paul Vigay
A cheque would be fine. Or direct electronic payment

Went to the village bank today, and they said they
charge £25 to transfer money to another bank account -
looks like I'll have to send a cheque.

That would be for a CHAPS (same day) transfer.
If you use BACS (accessible through on-line and
telephone banking) there is normally no charge.

So if I ask the bank to take their time, there'll be no
charge?

Most BACS transfers these days are automated; you cannot
always do them over the counter. If you can, you may well
need to get Paul to send you a paper paying in slip (Bank
Giro credit).

But if your bank charges you to make a transfer to an
account at another bank by internet banking, then you need
to change bank fast.

[Tennant Stuart]

Post by Russell Hafter News

Post by Tennant Stuart

Post by Russell Hafter News

Post by Tennant Stuart

Post by Paul Vigay
A cheque would be fine. Or direct electronic payment

Went to the village bank today, and they said they
charge £25 to transfer money to another bank account -
looks like I'll have to send a cheque.

That would be for a CHAPS (same day) transfer.
If you use BACS (accessible through on-line and
telephone banking) there is normally no charge.

So if I ask the bank to take their time, there'll be no
charge?

Most BACS transfers these days are automated; you cannot
always do them over the counter. If you can, you may well
need to get Paul to send you a paper paying in slip (Bank
Giro credit).

Can Paul send me a paper paying in slip?


Tennant

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Tennant Stuart
Can Paul send me a paper paying in slip?

If it's easier, a cheque would be fine. :-)

[Tennant Stuart]

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Tennant Stuart
Can Paul send me a paper paying in slip?

If it's easier, a cheque would be fine. :-)

Okay, I'll post one.


Tennant

[Tennant Stuart]

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Tennant Stuart
Can Paul send me a paper paying in slip?

If it's easier, a cheque would be fine. :-)

Have you received the cheque yet? I posted it *ages* ago.


Tennant

[Rosemary Miskin]

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Tennant Stuart
Not feeling so happy with all these authentication errors :(

Authentication where? Connecting in the first place,

I had to try three times yesterday, failing at 18:30 and 18:38 at the
initial authentication stage.

No problems today.

Rosemary

[Dr Peter Young]

Post by Rosemary Miskin

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Tennant Stuart
Not feeling so happy with all these authentication errors :(

Authentication where? Connecting in the first place,

I had to try three times yesterday, failing at 18:30 and 18:38 at the
initial authentication stage.

Also occasional quite long delays in connecting by broadband for the
last ten days or so. Nothing that patience won't cure, though!

Rosemary's difficulties reminds me of long ago with Argonet dial-up.

With best wishes,

Peter.

[Dr Peter Young]

[Posted and mailed]

Post by Dr Peter Young

Post by Rosemary Miskin

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Tennant Stuart
Not feeling so happy with all these authentication errors :(

Authentication where? Connecting in the first place,

I had to try three times yesterday, failing at 18:30 and 18:38 at the
initial authentication stage.

Also occasional quite long delays in connecting by broadband for the
last ten days or so. Nothing that patience won't cure, though!

FWIW, I can't get through to pop.o.... at the moment; Hermes reports
"Error: Connection to pop.orpheusnet.co.uk timed out", and the Orpheus
site isn't accessible either.

This happens perhaps two or three times per week ATM; always cured by
my being patient, but I'm sure it shouldn't happen.

With best wishes,

Peter.

[Dr Peter Young]

Post by Dr Peter Young
[Posted and mailed]

Post by Dr Peter Young

Post by Rosemary Miskin

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Tennant Stuart
Not feeling so happy with all these authentication errors :(

Authentication where? Connecting in the first place,

I had to try three times yesterday, failing at 18:30 and 18:38 at the
initial authentication stage.

Also occasional quite long delays in connecting by broadband for the
last ten days or so. Nothing that patience won't cure, though!

FWIW, I can't get through to pop.o.... at the moment; Hermes reports
"Error: Connection to pop.orpheusnet.co.uk timed out", and the Orpheus
site isn't accessible either.
This happens perhaps two or three times per week ATM; always cured by
my being patient, but I'm sure it shouldn't happen.

And further FWIW it's all working again now. Is there any explanation
for these little outages? Is it relevant that it's been raining and
thundering here?

With best wishes,

Peter.

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Dr Peter Young
And further FWIW it's all working again now. Is there any explanation
for these little outages? Is it relevant that it's been raining and
thundering here?

Was it just connection to mail, or did your entire broadband go down? If
the latter it could be something localised about the weather, but if the
former, then I doubt it.

No errors logged here and my machine has been doing mail fetches every 5
minutes, all day.

[Russell Hafter News]

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Dr Peter Young
And further FWIW it's all working again now. Is there
any explanation for these little outages? Is it
relevant that it's been raining and thundering here?

Was it just connection to mail, or did your entire
broadband go down? If the latter it could be something
localised about the weather, but if the former, then I
doubt it.
No errors logged here and my machine has been doing mail
fetches every 5 minutes, all day.

Well, I had much the same experience as Peter; around 1530
as I recall my system could not log into my Orpheus POP
mailbox. My system checks automatically every 12 minutes.
There were no problems logging in to the other 12 mailboxes
that are checked at the same time. pop.orpheusnet.co.uk was
resolved OK, but logging in to my mailbox just did not
happen.

I went to take the post out then, and by the time I got back
everything was back to normal.

Clearly nothing to do with the ADSL, but definitely
something at Orpheus somewhere.

[Dr Peter Young]

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Dr Peter Young
And further FWIW it's all working again now. Is there any explanation
for these little outages? Is it relevant that it's been raining and
thundering here?

Was it just connection to mail, or did your entire broadband go down? If
the latter it could be something localised about the weather, but if the
former, then I doubt it.

No, only three things: connection to send mail, access to the Orpheus
website and thus also failure to get the RSS feed. Fetching mail was
OK, and all other websites were OK. As I said, it has been happening
quite a bit lately, but never for more that half an hour or so at a
time. A nuisance rather than a real problem, but others seem to be
getting the same too. I wonder what's wrong?

With best wishes,

Peter.

[Dr Peter Young]

Post by Dr Peter Young

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Dr Peter Young
And further FWIW it's all working again now. Is there any explanation
for these little outages? Is it relevant that it's been raining and
thundering here?

Was it just connection to mail, or did your entire broadband go down? If
the latter it could be something localised about the weather, but if the
former, then I doubt it.

No, only three things: connection to send mail,

Sorry, that should have been /fetch/ mail; send was OK. The brain
isn't quite in this morning yet :-(

With best wishes,

Peter.

[Paul Vigay]

Sorry, that should have been /fetch/ mail; send was OK. The brain isn't
quite in this morning yet :-(

If this happenes again, try pressing f12 or opening a task window and
typing *ping pop.orpheusnet.co.uk and pressing return.

You should get a response from 194.93.128.39

Incidentally, do you keep your router turned on all the time, or do you
turn it on and off when not in use?

[Dr Peter Young]

Post by Paul Vigay

Sorry, that should have been /fetch/ mail; send was OK. The brain isn't
quite in this morning yet :-(

If this happenes again, try pressing f12 or opening a task window and
typing *ping pop.orpheusnet.co.uk and pressing return.
You should get a response from 194.93.128.39

The last time it happened I did ping pop.orpheusnet.co.uk, and got a
response; I can't remember the numeric address, though. It gets
194.93.128.39 today, certainly.

Post by Paul Vigay
Incidentally, do you keep your router turned on all the time, or do you
turn it on and off when not in use?

The router's always on, though I occasionally unplug it from the ADSL
socket if it thunders; not yesterday, though.

With best wishes, and thanks for the help,

Peter.

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Dr Peter Young
The last time it happened I did ping pop.orpheusnet.co.uk, and got a
response; I can't remember the numeric address, though. It gets
194.93.128.39 today, certainly.

Hmm. You certainly shouldn't be encountering any current problems with
fetching email. There is no load on the server and everything is working
smoothly - at 1:09pm on Sunday.

Post by Dr Peter Young
The router's always on, though I occasionally unplug it from the ADSL
socket if it thunders; not yesterday, though.

Not that it will affect this particular issue, but if you're disconnecting
from the phone socket (wise in the case of thunderstorms - especially as
there was a serious house fire a few doors down from me yesterday - caused
by a lightning strike!) you might as well turn off the router as well.
Unplugging the cable will disconnect the sync with the exchange anyway, so
it will need to resync when you next plug in. Might as well also save a bit
of power because it will have the same effect on the connection.

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Dr Peter Young
No, only three things: connection to send mail, access to the Orpheus
website and thus also failure to get the RSS feed. Fetching mail was OK,
and all other websites were OK. As I said, it has been happening quite a
bit lately, but never for more that half an hour or so at a time. A
nuisance rather than a real problem, but others seem to be getting the
same too. I wonder what's wrong?

Hmm. I suspect that's a DNS issue somewhere.

Incidentally, what mail transport agent do you use to send mail etc? Are
you using Voyager? POPstar? NetSurf? etc

[Dr Peter Young]

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Dr Peter Young
No, only three things: connection to send mail, access to the Orpheus
website and thus also failure to get the RSS feed. Fetching mail was OK,
and all other websites were OK. As I said, it has been happening quite a
bit lately, but never for more that half an hour or so at a time. A
nuisance rather than a real problem, but others seem to be getting the
same too. I wonder what's wrong?

Hmm. I suspect that's a DNS issue somewhere.
Incidentally, what mail transport agent do you use to send mail etc? Are
you using Voyager? POPstar? NetSurf? etc

NetFetch 2.20a (19/5/2006) including Hermes 1.29 (21/4/2006), which as
far as I know are the latest ones. I don't understand the workings of
Hermes, but this one doesn't have the problem of Drobe's changing
numeric address, so I assume it isn't caching anything.

It's not a really major problem for me; patience always pays off, but
I do wonder why it happens.

With best wishes,

Peter.