Attention: We are retiring the ASP.NET Community Blogs. Learn more >

SPAM, Damn SPAM, and SPAM Statistics.

We have all heard how SPAM is costing us money - wasted time, wasted bandwidth, anti-SPAM software, lost business emails, etc.

Recently I have discovered (unfortunately) a new way.  My ISP just notified me that I am violating their acceptable use for incoming SMTP connections - they limit to 5000 per day - I am receiving up to 8000.  They want to charge me an additional $30 per month to separate my hosting platform to its own server - that is $360/year to accommodate SPAM.  After being a customer of theirs for seven years (yes, 7!), they will terminate my service unless I solve the overuse.

A FICTITIOUS COMPARISON
I liken this problem to a random 100 people from every country in the world deciding to send me a postcard each day - and the post office decides to charge me a premium for handling all the mail!

How do you stop people from even trying to send you SPAM?  I am currently running a home grown .NET-based app to isolate SPAM sender's IP addresses so that the ISP can block them.

Anyone else have this problem?  What else can you do?  When will we finally get real legislation to stop this?

2 Comments

  • The solution here is quit simple. Cancel your account, then create a new one (with them or elsewhere, it doesn't matter).



    You get a nice clean shiny new email address which receives no spam for a while, and they still get 8000 smtp connections every day with no one to charge, because there's no active account to deliver the mail to.



    If enough people do this, your isp might wake up to itself and look at fixing the problem, rather than looking for a profit.



    To be honest, their behaviour is poor enough to switch isp's anyway. I just think it's a nice side effect that they end up with the same of traffic that costs them money, and no one to bill :)

  • Hmmm ... nice idea. I have had the same email address for 7 years though (probably part of the problem!). Also it is really the domain that is being targeted, not just the email address and the domain is necessary for my business - so I can't get rid of it. :(

Comments have been disabled for this content.