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English: For business enquiries, please also Phone to avoid risk of spam filters
deleting your mail enquiry unseen. I also send a quick
acknowledgement to new business mail, so if you don't hear
from me, please Phone
Deutsch: Für geschäftliches rufen Sie mich bitte kurz an, Bitte, damit
Ihre Email nicht moeglicherweise von meinen Spam-Filtern
ungelesen geloescht wird.
Avoid Being Automatically Deleted As Spam:
I get 500+ spams daily - automatically & silently deleted
unseen, with No warning sent back to (apparent) senders.
Do You Want To Not Be Deleted Unseen ? Then:
Mail Me in ASCII
Format,
Not In HTML (Web Page) Format = Spammer's Favourite
Format
- MIME enclosures containing HTML format are loved by
Spammers & used by Internet incompetents, (& some
people who should know better ! ).
- Configure your mailer to send Ascii, or get another
mailer program ! - Or be dumped with spammers &
incompetents.
- Avoid breaking words or phrases with HTML (Hyper Text
Markup Language ( Web Format) comments - No one except
spammers do it.
- Avoid spammer Formats, Font types, Sizes, Character
sets & Colours.
- Avoid Content-Transfer-Encoding: Base64 (OK, you Might
really need it, but mostly it's just a spammer subterfuge.
(I accept compressed source archive binaries in UU-Encoded
format, I don't need Base64.) If you must send base-64,
warn me in Ascii first, so I can rescue your base-64 from
the rubbish in the spam box !
- Do Not Send from Non RARP (Reverse Address Resolution
Protocol) resolving hosts, (Use a
proxy)
- Avoid Quoting Numeric Domains, Mangled Domains Names,
Fake Domains Names
Microsoft's proprietary formats (eg Word/Doc & Excel
etc) are Deleted Sight Unseen automatically, with no
warning to sender. It's invariably worthless spam &/or
to & from technical incompetents who aren't paying to
waste my time, ( My computers do Not run Microsoft, they
can display some MS excremental formats, but there's no
benefit. Mail in a publicly defined standard formats, or do
Not mail me. Best Send
Ascii .
Do Not Send Spurious Zip's that don't save much
It just marks you as another Microsoft user &/or
probable spammer trying to avoid a spam filter - &
Failing! (Unix people use eg gzip & bzip2 & perhaps
Uu-encode.)
Do Not Send Base 64 Just For Text
Base 64 is often a spammers trick to hide spam from
filters, so avoid it when you can. (Unix people have
uuencode too.)
Do Not Send eg "Click This URL For Your Mail/ News
letter"
I never click such rubbish.
Do Not Send From Spammer
Domains (inc. some Providers).
Domains include those of some major providers that are lax
& tolerate spammers. Do Not Send from them, routing
through them, & mentioning them in mail content.
The Berklix servers & my
personal filter silently discard mail with spammer
domains. ( If you want to ask me to remove a domain,
mail from a different address, or phone .
You may not be a spammer, but others on your domain may
have been, or others on your higher level domain, or,
unfortunately, people masquerading (though I mostly detect
that).
Many Internet Access Providers (IAPs) do not terminate
customers who excrete spam. If you use a cheap IAP, they
may be cutting staff costs, by ignoring spam complaints.
Such infested IAPs get blocked by recipient servers.
Don't be suckered. Don't just look for "Mega Cheap !"
"Mega fast !" ", "Loads of free web !" Some IAPs get
blocked because they don't give a damn, & happily host
spammers too. Choose carefully: Do you want your
mailing-from domain to be one known & sometimes blocked
as a spam cesspit ?
Example:
Many Road Runner *.rr.com domains are blocked by my
servers, as rr.com is or was (when blocked) a regular
known hoster of spammers. They sourced from 10% toward
(but somewhat less than) 20% of all spams my domains
received, till I blocked many rr.com sub domains. I've
often been within an ace of blocking all rr.com.
rr.com are a large USA ISP, infested with spammers,
shielded by many innocent clueless normal non spammer
co-user customers. They doubtless shelter behind the
stinking USA `right to spam' law. rr.com are effectively
by their inaction, commercial accomplices in spamming the
world. Illegal in many parts of the world. Getting the
USA a bad name. Sad as many Americans are innocent &
equally hate spammers.
rr.com earned this explicit mention, when they
consumed yet more of my time, unpaid, & unwilling:
Beyond spewing spam from their customers, they forwarded
a masqueraded spam not really from me, but purporting to
be, to an innocent postmaster who forwarded it to me.
(Possibly a sign of the leopard changing it's spots
?)
rr.com are or were a world class spam polluters'
commercial accomplice, (as well as `normal USA ISP)'
encouraged by the USA government under their stupid
annoying right to spam law.
Any domain that bounces a spam report sent to postmaster@
gets listed as a spam domain. Check if your postmaster@ address
works OK ! It's required to by RFCs which are
Internet Law.
Any domain that bounces a complaint sent to
postmaster@ gets forwarded to hostmaster@ Check if your hostmaster@ address
works OK ! It's required to by RFCs which are
Internet Law. If a domain blocks that too, I use eg whois
& ask the domain registrar to Suspend or Cancel The
Domain put them out of business.
If the registrar fails to respond, one can go to ICANN (Internet Corporation
for Assigned Names and Numbers) & get the
registrar put out of business too.
Do similar yourself, after first checking you are clean. Put
spammers & their suppliers & commercial crime
accomplices out of business !
Whatever your personal views as sender of legitimate mail:
Some recipients servers will automatically discard or
bounce all mail from domains where spammers are tolerated,
regardless that the irresponsible USA ISP's own government
legally allows.
Do Not Send Direct From Dynamic Dial Up Blocks
Dial up addresses & domains are particularly
uncontrolled, & where man spammers operate from. You
think I won't be blocking yours domain ? You'r probably
Wrong, I probably am !
- I even block my own IAP's dynamically allocated dial
up IP numeric range. The biggest IAP company in the
country, & I block it !
- So why wouldn't I be blocking your dynamic IPs too
?
- I block other companies you might think should be OK.
EG rr.com broadcast 10%
of all Spam I receive. They web advertise as Time Warner who used to
broadcast Bugs Bunny, but now Excrement. AOL pursues spammers, so why do
abuse@rr.com not
respond ? tin.it seems to be the Italian national phone
company, pushing Alice ( "Si informa la gentile clientela
che dal 1° ottobre 2006 Nuova Tin.it S.r.l. è
confluita per incorporazione in Telecom Italia S.p.A.")
But I finally after months blocked them too (as both
tin.it & vsmtp3.tin.it ) as they block abuse@ on
those domains. Any domain that gets abused for spam &
blocks their abuse@ address gets blocked.
Use A Proxy (Smart Host) Relay At
Your ISP's Fixed IP Machines.
Ensure your IAP uses a different set of domain names, &
IP numeric block addresses for dynamic dial up customers,
& their own more trusted proxy servers. Only then can
rest of world perhaps relax & unblock your IAP's proxy,
while leaving your dynamic IPs blocked.
Avoid American Spelling & Phrases
- I get hundreds of spams daily, almost all from (or
aimed at) Americans, & very few from the rest of the
world. The USA Congress expressly permitted Spam (Bill
S.1618 Title III passed by the 105th Congress); (Maybe
they've changed since but they started an industry off
spammers).
- This American deliberate pollution & abuse of the
world encourages contempt for the
USA Government
- Though Americans are the world's major spammers. some
Americans (but not the American goverment) are also leaders
in fighting Spam, see list below.
- USA spammers flood the world, but they use many non
English, uniquely American phrases & spellings, that
trigger spam auto-deletion.
- A filter that segregates subscribed list mail, &
discards all remaining mail with American spelling, loses
little real mail, & deletes much Spam.
- Some innocent mail may occasionally get deleted, but
Americans have the option of voting for better USA congress
& senate members to fix their polluting USA law, unlike
us non Americans who just suffer without recourse from a
flood of American excremental spam.
Avoid Spammer Phrases,
- Spammer Spellings, Phrases, & Words (mostly
American).
-
My Mail Filter
(Technical Detail for those who want to know how I filter
spam)
If you are Chinese/ Russian/ Korean/ Japanese etc, turn
off your non Latin font set indicator. (eg
charset="gb2312" etc) Else even if yours is genuine
business mail, or correspondence solely in Latin
character set, (eg derived from postings to technical
mail lists), your inclusion of Asian charset=
specifiers will get you deleted unseen.
Spam Advice From ISPs
Which Human Language ?
Let Who Benefits Determine The Language
- If you want to consume my time for your benefit &
not my benefit, encourage me to give you my time, by using
my language.
- If you'r giving information for my benefit & not
your benefit, preference your language if you want.
Direction
It's more efficient & less ambiguous if I write in my
language & you write in yours. Not other way round.
English
My native language. I'm British. On globally distributed
Internet projects we work in forms of internationalised
English.
Exceptions:
- If eg You'r Japanese, can't speak English, can
speak German.
- If you have included readers/ listeners who are
German, & don't understand English,
- If you're quoting or preparing a text for a German
publication
If you are a Paying Customer, you'r free to choose, but
omit Bavarian dialect. 
If you're not paying money, give English a try.
FAQ: Why don't I
use More German ?
French
I can still read French more or less, but not reliably
100%, & I won't write back in French, my French is far
too rusty, sadly.
Italian
I can't understand spoken Italian, well maybe a few words.
I can sometimes sort of read/ guess at, as I visit Italy
each year, & guess from my bases of English, German,
French & school Latin. (No chance of a reply in
Italian).
Dutch
I can't understand spoken Dutch. I can sometimes read/
guess at Dutch web sites, as it's similar to German with
odds English & French words tossed in & spelt
differently. (No chance of a reply in Dutch).
Viruses & Spam
(Silly question often asked till I documented it here)
Answer: "I want Less email ! "
I used to get even more mail, not just business &
personal email, but multiple clubs & event organising, many
tech lists + follow up, multiple server status logs, mail
list owner admin., & spam at numerous domains I run.
Some Email Welcome
- Business Purposes
- International public free source code projects.
- Personal friends on non computer topics etc
- Feedback where particularly invited on some pages.
Some Email Discouraged
-
Unsolicited Social Chat deriving from web pages please.
(Better chat in beergardens
etc; No desire to stay cross eyed in front of a screen!
I don't do IRCs/ chat rooms, blog reading etc either.
- Mail List
Subscription Requests (They frequently used to consume
additional time, extending on to to sundry club oriented
enquiries).
- Ski Trip
Bookings (Use the form!) (*)
-
Free help requests from Microsoft users
- I don't use Microsoft, & find it worse than
worthless. & won't help with it, unless pre paid by
customers in connection with Unix consultancy. Better use
Free
Software.
- Too many clueless people use computers, who never
bother to learn much, go to night classes, or pay
anyone to teach them.
- People pay car driving instructors/schools, but
fail to allocate money & time to learn to drive
their computer: Fail to take Internet courses & or
(read books & "How To" web pages etc.
- I don't have time to provide free help to hundreds
of club list members.
- To ask about your computer problems, do Not
email me, instead buy a beer & come to Friday beer
garden, while we defocus, not cross eyed at a
screen.
After clicking to mail me, Before
sending,
Remove the "._ERASE_" bit in my address.
Before mailing me, (or anyone else) from
my web pages, Remove the ._ERASE_ part, (which is there to
disrupt web crawler robots that harvest addresses for
spammers). Example: you need to change the domain of my
address
From: jhs
@berklix._ERASE_.com
To: jhs
@berklix.com
(with one "." in
middle, not 2, & no "_" ).
If this is not a business enquiry,Hopefully you will find
your answer on one of my web pages, or Standard Replies, but if you really believe I
will want to receive your mail as much as you want to send
it, go ahead & mail me
For Test / Debug
Only if you will phone after &
tell me which machine's logs I should search.
Business Enquiries / Geschäftliche
Anfragen
If you want to pay me for computer consultancy/
services, please also phone or fax or
SMS me, to avoid liklihood of your email being
accidentally automatically deleted in the flood of spam.
Für geschäftliche Anfragen rufen Sie mich bitte kurz an, damit Ihre
Email nicht moeglicherweise von meinen Spam-Filtern ungelesen
geloescht wird.
Sender Requests You Click To Acknowledge Receipt"
I don't often click, (except for business). They can be
spammer subterfuges I don't waste time examining URLs, so
ignore them. If you want a real time response, phone.
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