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New Mental Health Program Alarms Parents in Illinois
Posted 1:00 AM Eastern
by
Jim Kouri
May 24, 2007
© 2007 NewsWithViews.com
A growing number of Americans are being targeted for censorship by their Internet and e-mail service providers while at the same time IP servers are allowing scams to be perpetrated on their users.
For instance, according to customers using SBC-Global, their subscriptions to conservative news and commentary websites such as NewsWithViews.com are being blocked while e-mail scams advertising male organ enhancement or get-rich-quick schemes are delivered in bulk.
NWV subscriber "Christine" said, "After reviewing my past e-mails, I learned I hadn't received an e-mail alert [from NewsWithViews] since January 30, 2007."
"I wrote NewsWithViews indicating I wasn't receiving the alerts anymore and I didn't remember removing myself from their list. I assumed they would check to see if I unsubscribed (and just didn't remember). I haven't heard from them," she said. NWV folks said thy replied to her but the e-mail came back as blocked.
Another subscriber -- Mary Gasser -- reported to this writer that she's already found five conservative newsletters including NWV being blocked by her server SBC-Global.
"It's crazy how these people just decide to block e-mail and treat it as spam, but they treat spam as legitimate e-mail," says Ms. Gasser.
NWV editor told me they get in the nahborhood of 10 to 20 calls per week from NWV readers/subscribers asking why the NWV e-mail alerts stop coming. "We tell them it's not us it's their service provider that's blocking the e-mail alerts." Most of the callers were with SBC-Global/AT&T.
Political strategist Mike Baker of New Jersey is suspicious of Earthlink and SBCGlobal. He wonders how customers continue to receive unsolicited information on penis enhancement, get-rich-quick schemes, and pill pushing scams but their requested political e-mail is blocked by their Internet provider.
"I've personally had my desired e-mail blocked by IP servers, but I get regular e-mail on how to enlarge my sex organ or how to buy controlled substances on the internet," says Baker.
When this reporter contacted SBCGlobal about these complaints, I received the following:
SBC/Yahoo is filtering the e-mail. Basically, all mail traffic on your DSL connection is monitored and any traffic that is outbound (SMTP) mail that is NOT destined to be delivered by their servers, is being blocked (rejected). This is generally done when an ISP can not adequately control their spam problem, their users get infected and their PC's start sending out large amounts of mail to other people without the owner's knowledge (what Viruses and Trojans do) and getting SBC in trouble with spam watching systems that then blacklist their network IP addresses.
This helps curb that problem, but it creats another by hampering the innocent users, and in particular the corporate sector. In short, your freedom of choice has been removed without your knowledge or warning (2/23/2005). This means that if you have been using Authenticated sending, where your Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) is the same as your Incoming (POP3) Mail Server, with Authentication turned on (IE "my server requires authentication" checked in your mail options) - you can no longer do this. You must change your mail settings to one of the following outgoing mail servers (and turn OFF authentication):
mail.sbcglobal.net
(Recommended Choice)
mail.swbell.net
smtp.sbcglobal.yahoo.com
The good news is that SBC is allowing it's users to fill out a website form requesting that they remove this feature on their account. The following method will allow you to "opt out" of this forced filtering:
Go to : help.sbcglobal.net/servabuse.php
Fill out all of your information as required.
When it asks for "abuse type," choose 'Opt out port 25'.
In the Abuse Description portion of the form, you need to enter in your domain name (IE mail.mydomain.com where mydomain.com is your actual domain name)
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This procedure typically takes 24 hours for them to complete, and will allow users to resume authentication. If you are frustrated with this forced restricted change on your Internet connection, we politely suggest that you contact your SBC representative, and let them know that you are not happy with this forced blocking and that having no notification on this change, which caused an inconvenience, was very unappreciated.
AT&T Yahoo! Help - Report Abuse of Service
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For instance, according to customers using SBCGlobal, their subscriptions to conservative news and commentary websites such as NWV are being blocked while e-mail advertising male organ enhancement or get-rich-quick scams are delivered in bulk.
