AT&T rues 'too effective' spam filter

AT&T Broadband falls afoul of its own spam filter

[cyril kearney]

Here is the URL of a news story posted on Silicon.com

[silicon.com...]

This is a form of hidden censorship that is imposed by AT&T Broadband on their unknowing subscribers in Big Brother fashion.

Let's censor the emails and mails, then the newspapers, then radio and TV to insure that the US is safe for Democracy and the free pursuit of Capitalism.

[Mardi_Gras]

Cyril - looks like they've "updated" their filter to allow their own spam to go through - from their web site:

"Please note that the E-mail Screener protects customers from messages sent from outside of AT&T Broadband Internet, but does not protect customers from e-mail originating from another AT&T Broadband Internet account."

It would seem to me that any filter system should be opt-in. AT&T says their's works without any action required by the user - does seem troublesome.

[added]This feature uses Brightmail (TM) software to filter spam and is automatically activated on each of your AT&T Broadband Internet e-mail accounts. No action is required on your part to activate this feature.[/added]

[tedster]

This is definitely a "rock and a hard place" problem. We recently had to move one client from their ISP because overly aggressive spam filtering was severing business communication between the US and Europe.

> It would seem to me that any filter system should be opt-in.

Yes, I agree - but it seems there are challenges in doing this. At least the ISP I mentioned above claimed so.

They were excellent in many respects, so I don't think I was getting the run-araound. They clearly didn't want to lose this client. But I was quickly lost in the spam-filter details the president gave me. Apparently email service has a whole lot going on that doesn't meet the eye.

(edited by: tedster at 7:33 pm (utc) on May 23, 2002)

[bingymon]

Here's another interesting article on when spam policing gets out of control.

[dc.internet.com...]

Maybe educational resources on how to avoid spam, so people can police themselves is what's needed.