January 19, 2005

When your ISP (ie Verizon) helps you LOSE business

A few days ago a business owner on a networking email discussion list was explaining how his ISP was blocking certain emails and inadvertently blocking legitimate emails from his CUSTOMERS.

I thought he must be using a low budget ISP. But the Washington Post is reporting that Verizon blocks large swaths of email from Asia and Europe in order to stem the tide of spam to its customers.

If you have an ISP that does not let YOU control if spam is blocked or not, you need to switch ISPs. While many anti-spam programs work well, your business can not afford to have an ISP that TOO aggressively blocks spam and blocks legitimate customer emails.

Earthlink, for example, lets users select three levels of spam protection 1) nothing 2) light - it makes a best guess 3) blocking ALL email except for those in your address book

The Washington Post writes "My business has been disrupted," said Gerson S. Sher, an independent consultant who works on projects fostering scientific cooperation between the United States and Russia. He said a contract he was negotiating was delayed by several weeks, and another key meeting failed to take place because correspondents could not get e-mail through to him.

Douglas Place, vice president of Verizon's data network services, said the company is not blocking entire regions, has not changed its policies and is merely doing what most Internet service providers do: monitoring its own networks and blocking mail from other networks that Verizon deems to be conduits of large-scale spamming.

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