We at Inland Internet are committed to providing our
subscribers with the best service possible. Filters to block Unsolicited
Commercial Email [UCE] and Unsolicited Bulk Email [UBE]
(commonly refered to as spam) were implemented on Inland Internet mail
servers shortly after the service began in 1996 and in connection with the
Inland Internet Acceptable
Use Policy [AUP] which forbids this illicit activity.
Currently (July 2003) about forty percent of the messages reaching the
Inland Internet servers are blocked as spam. That is approximately two
out of every five messages.
One unfortunate side effect of having spam filtered email
has been the rare legitimate message that gets inadvertently blocked.
While some do not mind an occasional lost message, others consider that
to be totally unacceptable and do not mind sorting through a multitude
of spam to find one or two messages that are not. Recent changes to improve
subscriber Internet experience will now easily accomodate either
subscriber's spam fighting preferences. A new program was created which
allows subscriber customizable spam filtering. It is called MaTLDA™.
MaTLDA™ allows subscribers to selectively enable or disable spam
filtering options or override filtering which is interfering with
legitimate messages.
See the MaTLDA™ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) if you have questions not answered here.
Download
MaTLDA™ Configuration Wizard
(compatible with Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP)
(latest release: version 1.2 released Feb 5th, 2004)
Using the MaTLDA™ Configuration Wizard is very simple. Start
downloading the file by clicking the above link. You will be asked where
you would like to put the file - choose to place it on the Desktop.
Once the file is downloaded you will see a new icon on
your desktop entitled MaTLDA, or MaTLDA.exe.
Double click that icon.
When the MaTLDA™ Configuration Wizard opens, you will see
a space to enter a username, a space for a password and a space for a host name.
Below these is some information explaining how it works. Stop and read this
information before proceeding!
When you have finished reading the introduction and
preliminary instructions sign in by filling in the spaces with the necessary
information and hitting "Enter" on your keyboard. The "username" is just that,
the name you selected when you signed up for Internet service. Do not enter your
e-mail address. Your username is normally what comes before the "@" (at sign)
part of your e-mail address. You will notice when typing your password the space
remains blank. This is normal and your password is being entered although
you will not see it. The host name is the name of the server that you download
your Inland Internet e-mail from and is likely mail.inlandnet.com. If you
correctly log in, the information you entered will be saved and the "Spam Blocking"
tab located at the top of the application will automatically open.
After logging in, direct your attention to the two check boxes to the
right side of the "Spam Blocking" page labeled "Use Local RBL" and "Use DNS RBL".
These were explained in the information you read before entering your username
and password. These are the "by default" filters used on the mail server, and if
you leave them checked the filters will remain in place for your email account.
If you want no filters on your account, you may uncheck these boxes.
Next, look at the fields entitled "White List", "Black List", and "White/Black List e-Mail address". This will be where you do most of your customizations. You will need to type in the email address (username@domain.com) or domain name (domain.com) for any messages you wish to receive or block in the space labeled "White/Black List e-Mail address". Once you have done this you will click the button labeled "ADD WL" to override spam blocks and allow messages from that address through, or, you will click the button labeled "ADD BL" to add a block for that address to your mail account. Again, to clarify:
- White List = messages you want
- Black List = messages you do not want
Once you are finished you must click "SAVE" for the
changes to take effect.
You will notice as you start adding address and domains
to your white and black lists that they will appear in the appropriate
fields as marked. You may move addresses from being Blacklisted to
being White listed (and vice versa) easily by highlighting the address
in question and clicking the up/down arrows. To delete an address from
a list, simply highlight that address and click the "DEL
WL" or "DEL BL" buttons as they correspond to the field the address is
in.
One other feature added to this application that may be of interest is the "email RBL Spam Logs". If you choose to use this feature you will receive an email showing you exactly what addresses sending to your account were blocked. You can choose to receive a weekly or a daily log. If you would like to receive it daily, you will choose that option from the pull down menu. If you'd prefer to receive a log once per week you will choose the day of the week you'd like to receive it from the pull down menu.
We at Inland Internet hope this application will be useful to you. If at any time you have questions regarding the use of MaTLDA™ please feel free to call our technical support team between 8 am and 7 pm M-F at the number listed below:
Our Roslyn Office: (509)649-4600
Our Uniontown Office: (509)229-4600
For more information about spam, click on one of the links below.
Often, spam is used to advertise (or spamvertise) services or goods of dubious, or even illegal, nature such as make money fast (MMF) schemes, multi-level marketing (MLM) or pyramid schemes, pornography, etc.
Why is it called "spam"?
The generally accepted origin of the term "spam" for unwanted messages comes from the Monty Python skit that featured a song with lyrics that include, "Spam spam spam spam, spam spam spam spam, lovely spam, wonderful spam."
Says Hormel, "Use of the term 'spam' was adopted as a result of the Monty Python skit in which a group of Vikings sang a chorus of 'spam, spam, spam . . .' in an increasing crescendo, drowning out other conversation. Hence, the analogy applied because UCE was drowning out normal discourse on the Internet."
Why is spam bad?
Spam is bad for a multitude of reasons. Unlike the "junk mail" you receive in your "snail" mailbox, electronic junk mail costs the recipients more time and money than it costs the sender. For example, AOL has said that they were receiving 1.8 million spams from Cyber Promotions per day until they got a court injunction to stop it. Many major service providers estimate that upwards of 30% of their daily email traffic is spam, costing them upwards of $1 million per month in hardware, bandwidth, and administrative costs -- equaling nearly $2 per month per user. By contrast, the spammer can use a simple dial-up account with an Internet service provider and send out more than a half-million emails per day for around $20/month.
Spam is also an unequalled time-waster. It takes time to download, sort through, and identify junk mail, and then it takes time to discard it. Assuming that it takes the typical user only 10 seconds to download, identify, and discard a message, that equates to about 5,000 hours of connect time per day spent for an ISP the size of AOL.
No other kind of advertising costs the advertiser so little and the recipient so much. The closest analogy would be auto-dialing junk phone calls to cellular users or receiving a bill from your postman for "postage due" on that month's junk mail; you can imagine how favorably that might be received.
