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Bob Jones
bj@oregon.uoregon.edu
In response to ongoing complaints from Oregon users concerning unwanted email, Computing Center systems staff recently broadened its spam-blocking efforts on the VMScluster to work the way they do on Darkwing and Gladstone.
The new filtering mechanism, which was activated December 17, enables us to block email from spam sites that had eluded our existing filters. Each of our filters has been instituted in response to complaints from one or more of our users-and usually a lack of responsiveness on the part of the administrators at the originating site when we notify them of the problem. In many cases the "From:" address in these messages is forged and does not correspond to a valid email address.
During our initial experimentation with these filters several months ago, we
learned that a few users actually wanted to get messages from some of the blocked
sites. To address their concerns, we're using a blocking mechanism that bounces
the blocked message back to the sender. This should alert legitimate senders
that their message didn't go through and enable them to contact their correspondent
by other means (i.e., from a different address that we do not block).
If you discover you're not getting legitimate messages because they're being
blocked by our filter, you have several alternatives:
- You can ask your correspondents either to write you from a different email
address, or have them ask their system administrators to contact abuse@oregon.uoregon.edu
to try to resolve the problem. They should be sure to specify what domain they
are representing, since ISPs will often serve numerous domains, not all of which
we would be likely to block.
- You can submit a request to abuse@oregon.uoregon.edu
to remove a filter blocking a specific address, citing your reasons. We do not
promise to honor your request, but we do promise to consider it carefully.
- If we cannot justify removing our system-wide filter, we may be able to set
up a personal bypass of the filter for your Oregon account.