The Battle of the Bulge: Retaking control of our email May 2003 Peter M. Abraham Imagine if 50% or more of your email was SPAM.  I would hope that thought frightens you, but we are not too far from it.  According to Brightmail, a San Francisco-based provider of anti-spam services, 45% of all e-mail sent in March 2003 was SPAM. The cost in lost productivity alone, think about how much time it takes you to delete spam e-mails over the course of a year, will amount to nearly $4 billion in 2003, according to Ferris Research. Consumer complaints continue to rise. In 2001, the FTC received 10,000 junk e-mails each day forwarded by complaining consumers. The agency now receives 130,000 messages daily. The battle continues to grow as the government gets involved responding to consumer complaints.  Virginia enacted the nation's harshest anti-spam law Tuesday, giving authorities the power to seize assets earned from sending bulk unsolicited e-mail pitches while imposing up to five years in prison. What Can I Do With the SPAM in my In-Box? Report it to the Federal Trade Commission. Send a copy of unwanted or deceptive messages to uce@ftc.gov. The FTC uses the unsolicited emails stored in this database to pursue law enforcement actions against people who send deceptive spam email. Let the FTC know if a "remove me" request is not honored. If you want to complain about a removal link that doesn't work or not being able to unsubcribe from a list, you can fill out the FTC's online complaint form at www.ftc.gov. Your complaint will be added to the FTC's Consumer Sentinel database and made available to hundreds of law enforcement and consumer protection agencies. Whenever you complain about spam, it's important to include the full email header. The information in the header makes it possible for consumer protection agencies to follow up on your complaint. What is Dynamic Net, Inc. (DNI) doing about SPAM? DNI is taking an active role in the battle to regain our email. We have installed SpamAssassin on all of our email servers.  Mail suspected of being SPAM is tagged with *****SPAM***** in the subject line.  Instructions for how to filter this tag to a SPAM folder for later review can be found at http://www.dynamicnet.net/spamhelp.htm.   We just installed SpamGuard on all our mail servers.  SpamGuard checks bulk emailing to customers on our servers, and if bulk emailing is taking place, shuts down the ability for the mailer to send bulk email. Please note that we review all actions done by SpamGuard to ensure we are only blocking SPAM houses. Positive Software, the authors of Parallels H-Sphere (our new hosting automation technology) is working on allowing per mail box control of SpamAssassin and anti-virus settings.  They are hoping to have this enhancement out before the end of this year. We take this battle very seriously.  SPAM companies use resources vital to providing you with service such as our Internet connectivity and server resources.  We want to ensure you continue to have reliable and high speed services through our company. Please feel free to email support[at symbol goes here]dynamicnet.net with any questions or concerns you have with the measures we are taking or this issue.