30 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981
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The Telecom Digest for August 26, 2011
Volume 30 : Issue 213 : "text" Format
====== 29 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== |
Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Bill Horne and
the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other
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We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we
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we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands
against crime. - Geoffrey Welsh
See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details
and the name of our lawyer, and other stuff of interest.
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Date: 25 Aug 2011 05:48:50 -0000
From: "John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Email spam getting to me
Message-ID: <20110825054850.18004.qmail@joyce.lan>
I concur with the suggestion that you use gmail. You can either set
up your Stanford account to forward to your gmail account, or you can
tell gmail to poll your Stanford mailbox with POP. Either way, you can
configure gmail to put your Stanford address on outgoing mail if you
want.
Gmail's filtering is likely to be better than Stanford's for two
reasons. One is that the more mail you can look at, the better a job
of filtering you can do, since you can look for more interesting
patterns as well as just looking for lots of copies of stuff. The
other is that university mail systems tend to do a fairly lame job of
filtering, partly because they're small mail systems with limited
budgets, partly because faculty members who know nothing about
computers are paranoid about their mail being "censored" so it's
politically hard to do the kind of hard blocks they need to do.
You can demand a magic word in your incoming mail if you want, but I
think you will find that you overestimate how many people are willing
to jump through hoops to send you mail, so they just won't bother.
R's,
John
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 21:34:32 -0700
From: AES <siegman@stanford.edu>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Why Shutting Down Cell Service Is Not Just Against The Law,
Message-ID: <siegman-0C538F.21343224082011@bmedcfsc-srv02.tufts.ad.tufts.edu>
In article <j33na3$1i4$1@reader1.panix.com>,
richgr@panix.com (Rich Greenberg) wrote:
>
> BTW, the term "femtocell" is a registered trademark of (I think) AT&T.
> I have one from Sprint and its called an "AirAve".
>
Optus in Australia calls it a "Home Zone", which I'd say is a
reasonably neat descriptor:
http://www.optus.com.au/dafiles/OCA/OptusHome/HomeRedesign/mobile-phones/homezone/
The video on that page is also a reasonably neat way of conveying to
non-techie types what a femtoc... pardon me, a "Home Zone" device -- does.
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2011 07:53:32 -0700 (PDT)
From: "daryl.gibson@gmail.com" <daryl.gibson@gmail.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Email spam getting to me
Message-ID: <f578ddd5-3b14-4f37-8562-f3669e343f8d@s35g2000prm.googlegroups.com>
[[ Moderatr note: Its time to call this subject closed. ]]
> Thanks for suggestion. Haven't tried Gmail -- and, to be honest,
> probably won't want to expend enough free time and effort to give it a
> fair trial.
Suit yourself. My email addresses have been posted on the Internet for
years, and so attract a lot of email, which all gets delivered to
Gmail. One recent 48-hour period saw 1244 pieces of spam caught by
Gmail, and only two pieces of spam made its way through Gmail's
filters, with no false positives (I looked). Those two pieces were
unusual --- ordinarily I don't see any spam. I've got a few filters in
place that label mail based on sender, but unlike when I used Yahoo
Mail, with Gmail, I don't need to institute filters for spam, unless
it's real email that I just don't want to get.
As John said, Gmail is much better than a magic word (or the
irritating email processing services which demand your correspondents
go to a website and whitelist their email address). People rarely are
going to bother with either if they're trying to communicate with you.
If you really want to be old-school, you can forward all your Stanford
email to a Gmail account, and then use Eudora to pop it off Gmail,
sans spam. Sort of a silly way to do it, particularly with all the
benefits that a Google account brings (photo storage, G+, personalized
news, etc.), but it can be done, and Gmail wouldn't care if you read
it with Eudora, since they allow POP both in and out of Gmail, and
IMAP for messages housed on Gmail.
It'll take just a few minutes to set up, and then you're spam-free.
Tuning it to your own personal preferences may take a little longer if
you use labels, but not that long.
Daryl
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2011 07:25:23 -0700 (PDT)
From: Hancock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: New BART policy on cellphone shutdowns
Message-ID: <0d2c0d3c-4797-46ec-ab22-a442243d2269@s12g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>
SF Gate reported, "BART directors, slammed with criticism over the
transit system's decision to shut down underground wireless service to
stop a demonstration, agreed Wednesday (8/24/11) they should limit use
of that tactic to extreme situations in which public safety is
endangered."
The ACLU acknowledged that a cellphone shutdown may be necessary, but
"only in extreme circumstances such as a hostage situation or a bomb
that could be detonated by a cell phone."
For full article please see:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/25/BA3C1KRINF.DTL
Another SF Gate article reports that BART passengers have lost
patience with the protesters.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/25/BAB91KRBA5.DTL
The San Francisco Examiner reports that the protest group,
"Anonymous", was not satisfied with BART's new policy. "Anonymous
said it would protest until BART fires spokesman Linton Johnson and
police chief Kenton Rainey, apologizes for shutting down cellphone
service and opens a new investigation into the July 3 shooting of
Charles Hill by BART officers. Members affiliated with Anonymous
posted a lewd photo of Johnson online on Wednesday."
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/2011/08/activists-say-bart-protests-will-not-end-until-police-force-disbanded
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2011 14:43:26 -0500
From: Jim Haynes <jhaynes@cavern.uark.edu>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Should I be suspicious?
Message-ID: <nbadnYonvK5DOMvTnZ2dnUVZ_hSdnZ2d@earthlink.com>
The phone rang a while ago, and a female voice said you have a
message from [mumble] at 479-599-9999. And then a different voice
said press 1 to hear the message.
I have the plainest of POTS, no call waiting, no voice mail, no caller ID,
nothing extra.
I hung up the phone without pressing 1, as I was suspicious and anyway
I was just leaving the house.
Should I be suspicious, or is this a known OK service?
[[ Moderator note:
One can find a surprising amount of information by simply plugging
a phone number into the Google search box.
This was almost certainly a phoney marketing call. 479-599-xxxx is a
cellular exchange in Siloam Springs AR.
This can be any of a number of kinds of scams. It could tack charges
on your phone bill -- claiming that the 'press 1' authorized them to
do so -- just to name one possibility.
It is remotely possible that this is a 'keep trying to deliver the
message' from a phone company -- a service offered to customers of
the 'offering' phone company when one of their subscribers calls a 'busy'
number. I've run into such services once or twice. They identified
up front who the phone company was; and there was none of theis 'press`'
nonsense, There was the ID, then the message played, with an 'after the
fact' option for a repeat play.
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