If LO Mail stops... LO17463

Richard Karash (rkarash@karash.com)
Wed, 18 Mar 1998 22:16:42 -0500 (EST)

Summary: If learning-org mail stops appearing in your in-box, it may be
that your site is blocking our mail. This is happening increasingly as
sites everywhere are trying to keep unwanted "junk" email from reaching
users. The filters they establish to block "SPAM" may inadvertantly block
incoming mail from mailing lists like ours.

If the LO mail stops:

1. Check the LO web page (URL below) to see if there are current messages
2. Ask support people if they are attempting to block incoming SPAM.
3. Give them one of our messages and ask them to let the learning-org
mail flow. Tell them it's a legitimate list that you want to receive.
Invite them to write me if any questions.
4. Then, write me (addr below) to see if your address is still on the
list.

-----

A little more detail:

SPAM is a tremendous problem on the net these days. Some estimates are
that 10-20% of all net traffic is unwanted junk mail.

If you have ever posted a msg to the LO list, your address is potentially
visible and you may start receiving strange junk email. If so, the only
practical thing to do is just delete it. The junk mail will probably say,
"Just write... and we'll remove your address..." but it is widely believed
that this only confirms the validity of your address and increases the
liklihood of getting more junk. It will be frustrating, but just hit
"delete."

All ISPs and many corporate sites are struggling with this and most are
experimenting with filters on the incoming email stream. Unfortunately,
the unanticipated consequence of the filters is to block mail from large
mailing lists. Compuserve blocked all LO mail to all our subscribers in
two episodes. Ditto for corporate and university sites. I'm seeing more
and more cases, and I fear the worst... That our LO mail will become
intermittant or stop to a significant fraction of you.

Since LO is a free service, I simply cannot help you troubleshoot this.
Please follow the steps above or you'll drown me in requests. (From time
to time, I see a suspicious "Undeliverable" notice, and I'll forward it to
the subscriber to check-out. For obvious reasons, these notices are
deliberately unclear.)

In particular, if our mail stops and you want to find out if there have
been any msgs, please check the LO web page first before writing me.

-- Rick

-- 
      Richard Karash ("Rick")    |  <http://world.std.com/~rkarash>
  Speaker, Facilitator, Trainer  |     email: rkarash@karash.com
"Towards learning organizations" | Host for Learning-Org Mailing List
(617)227-0106, fax (617)523-3839 |   <http://www.learning-org.com>


        Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com>
  Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>