May 4, 2006

The REVERSE Effects of Spam...Continued

Earlier this morning I checked my email and noticed I had ZERO email. I get dozens of email messages a day (not including spam) and so I found this VERY interesting if not to say a bit troublesome as Smallbiztechnology.com runs on 2 things - email and web sites!

I did some digging around and found out that late last night or earlier this morning Hypermart (my web host) had changed my (and I assume others) email settings (WITHOUT NOTIFICATION MIND YOU) to "save". This means that all email received will go to a holding location for me to look at online.

In an effort to curb spam Hypermart has changed its email policies for "catch-all email address" to give its customers three options.

1. Bounce - all email address sent to one's domain, except for those to a mail box that has been specifically set-up by the user will be bounced back to the sender

2. Save - All email to the domain, unless sent to a specific email box, will be saved for review by the user

3. Trash - All email address, except those sent to a specific email account will be trashed.

Fortunately Hypermart set my email settings to "save", so after some digging around the emails that I had not received were waiting for me. I then configured my email program (Mozilla Thunderbird) to download email from Hypermart (for my email) and Google's Gmail (my alternate email address).

There's two lessons from this story:

1. In an effort to curb spam, email hosts must ensure they do not disrupt business.

2. Technology vendors SHOULD ALWAYS inform, if not ask, customers of any changes to their "preferences". In fairness to Hypermart, they did email customers about these changes, but I had emailed and asked them to NOT touch my account and was told they would leave my settings alone.

Clearly my account was changed.

Another thing I see, Hypermart was doing a very good job of blocking spam as I now receive hundreds, maybe even 1 or 2 thousand spam messages per day.

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