Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id IAA08292; Sat, 22 Feb 1997 08:07:13 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 08:07:13 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199702221307.IAA08292@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #48 TELECOM Digest Sat, 22 Feb 97 08:07:00 EST Volume 17 : Issue 48 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Colorado PUC Investigates New Telcos (Tad Cook) NY Times on Moldova Scam (Tad Cook) FCC Access Fee Reform Proceedings (Monty Solomon) UCLA Short Course on "Telecommunications Networking" (Bill Goodin) Book Review: "Pegasus Mail for Windows" by Kocmoud/Pierce/Stegman (R Slade) Sanford Wallace ("Spam King") to Start His Own Spam Service (Lisa Hancock) Cyber Promotions, Evil, Evil, EVIL (Danny Burstein) Re: 800/888 Confusion Messes up Advertising (Judith Oppenheimer) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. 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Smith, The Denver Post Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News Feb. 20--Tipped off by a Denver Post story, Colorado regulators Wednesday reviewed evidence that the state's newest telephone companies inappropriately refused to service residential customers. After talking with Public Utilities Commission staffers, PUC regulators cleared ICG Communications Inc. of Englewood, saying the company took immediate steps this week to correct its error. But utility commissioners ordered officials of New York-based TCG Inc. to meet with them Feb. 25. Discussion will center on TCG's contention that it can't provide residential service due to technical problems. "We're meeting with the commission's staff because they want clarification," said Mike Ruley, TCG spokesman. "The commission did not cite us." At issue is whether local telephone providers must offer residential as well as business service, given that computer linkages between the new providers and US West Communications Inc. are not complete. The link is necessary because both companies will route their residential customers' calls over US West's phone lines. Hooking US West's system into ICG's and TCG's will allow the competitors' own customer service employees to do routine tasks, such as setting up service for a new customer or answering a billing question, Ruley said. The linkage is less urgent for ICG's and TCG's business customers, because both companies built their own fiber optic networks to ring the city's major commercial areas. They laid fiber optic lines near downtown Denver skyscrapers and Denver Tech Center business parks because telephone companies make a lot more money off of multi-line businesses than they do from single-line residential customers. On Friday, a Denver Post reporter posing as a consumer was turned down for residential service by both ICG and TCG representatives. State regulations require telephone companies to offer residential service if they're offering business service. In addition to apparently violating state regulations, the turn-downs may confirm what officials of US West have long predicted: that competitors would "cherry pick" the telephone giant's lucrative business accounts and stick them with the less-profitable residential customers. PUC director Bruce Smith told commissioners at Tuesday's meeting that ICG admitted it was in the wrong and took steps to remedy the situation. Since Friday, ICG officials put together a four-person residential service team, re-trained employees, designed a computerized form to deal with requests and developed an information packet for prospective residential customers. ICG officials told PUC staffers that the problem stemmed from "first-day jitters." The PUC had given regulatory approval to ICG just two days before The Denver Post called. "Our staff believes ICG has addressed the problem and now intends to provide residential service," said PUC spokesman Terry Bote. "They have solved their issues." "TCG, on other hand, is still working with the PUC staff to resolve differences. That's why we are meeting Feb. 25, to try and resolve these differences." TCG has been authorized to provide local service since Jan. 23. TCG's Ruley said his company is not violating state regulations, because PUC rules direct US West to provide a computer link -- called an interface -- that allows other companies to tap into its network. Without that, Ruley said, "we cannot take orders electronically. We cannot review billing records. We cannot give quality service, and there are substantial penalties if we cannot deliver quality service." The linkage "is up and running but still being tested to make sure that orders are handled flawlessly," responded US West spokesman David Beigie. He could not say when it will be available to competitors. Noting that ICG will process residential service orders manually until the computer linkage is available, Beigie asked why TCG does not do the same. "All the companies have to do is pick up the phone and give us a call. We're ready to take orders for residential service -- but to this point, we haven't gotten one, not from any company in Colorado," Beigie said. ICG spokeswoman Cindy Schonhaut said dozens of callers have requested residential service since The Post's story ran Saturday, but said most sound like they are reading from a script. She believes they are US West employees. ------------------------------ Subject: NY Times on Moldova Scam Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 23:53:56 PST From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) Scheme bills browsers for high phone costs New York Times WASHINGTON -- In what authorities describe as a fraudulent new high-technology scheme, telephone and Internet marketers are joining with telecommunications companies in emerging nations to bilk unsuspecting consumers around the world. The latest operation, uncovered by federal regulators and American phone company investigators this month, enticed on-line computer browsers with a promise of free pornography and then subjected users to exorbitant telephone charges billed from a number in Moldova, the former Soviet republic. A federal judge in New York shut down the operation, allegedly run by three Long Island residents, after the Federal Trade Commission accused the defendants of running "one of the most insidious scams" the agency had ever seen. Federal officials uncovered a similar operation in November involving an Iowa company that lured telephone customers to place lengthy calls for free travel offers to numbers in Guyana and the Caribbean. Officials said they expected such schemes to proliferate as sophisticated World Wide Web site operators employed the growing telephone systems of underdeveloped nations to defraud naive Internet users. "There are phone companies all over the world that have tried to attract business from information providers using pay-per-call services," said Eileen Harrington, an FTC specialist in telecommunications fraud. Ms. Harrington said that phone companies in several countries were aggressively soliciting business from Internet and long-distance information service providers by apparently agreeing to pay them a portion of the telephone billing revenue. She said that these countries had invested in state-of-the-art telephone systems but did not have sufficient local business to support them and are looking abroad for income. Ms. Harrington said that she did not know whether the foreign telephone companies were active participants in the schemes or merely conduits for fraudulent activity beyond their borders. An official of the Moldovan Embassy in Washington said that his government was looking into the alleged fraud. "I have called people at the Federal Trade Commission to give me more information so that the ministry of telecommunication can begin the investigation," said Vlad Spanu, economic counselor at the Moldovan mission here. He speculated that the alleged scheme could involve "some private people in Moldova" but said it was not yet clear that the calls ever reached Moldova. In the current case, the FTC sought a permanent injunction against three individuals -- and three companies they controlled -- who allegedly offered free pornography on three Internet sites: www.sexygirls.com, www.beavisbutthead.com and www.1adult.com. Named in the FTC complaint were Anna M. Grella, William Gannon and David Zeng, who operated three companies: Audiotex Connection Inc., of Rockville Centre, N.Y., Promo Line Inc., of Dix Hills, N.Y., and Electronic Forms Management, of no known address. Jodie Bernstein, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said that the complex scheme threatened the integrity of the Internet and posed a formidable law enforcement and regulatory challenge. "This scam has generated numerous complaints, many from parents with Internet-savvy children, who have incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal phone charges," Ms. Bernstein said. Judge Denis R. Hurley of U.S. District Court in Hauppauge, N.Y., issued a temporary restraining order against the defendants on Feb. 13. The order was kept under seal until midnight Tuesday to give authorities time to locate and freeze their assets to help recover consumers' costs in the alleged fraud. Joel R. Dichter of New York, the defendants' lawyer, said that the web sites contained disclosures that the material was for adults only and notified users that they would be connected to a telephone number in Moldova. He said that his clients shut down the sites before the FTC action and noted that there were no regulations to govern behavior on the Internet. "One learns as one goes," Dichter said. He also denied that his clients had a kickback arrangement with the Moldovan phone company, as the FTC alleged. And he insisted that they "are not pornographers." The three Internet sites were described in accompanying promotional material as providing "All Nude All Free pictures" with no membership fees or credit card charges, according to the FTC complaint. Users who wished to enter the sites were told they must download an electronic "viewer" to receive the images. The viewer contained a software program that clicked off the user's telephone connection to his local Internet service provider and reconnected the computer to a phone number in Moldova that generated charges of $2 to $3 a minute. "Their modems were basically hijacked," Ms. Harrington said. The program shut off the speaker in the computer dialing device so that the users could not hear their Internet connection being broken and the new number in Moldova being dialed. "It gets worse," Ms. Bernstein said. "Once the program is activated, it does not disconnect the international call when consumers leave the defendants' web sites to visit other web sites, or even when they sign off the Internet and turn to other computer activities such as word processing." The charges stopped accruing only when the computer was turned off. And the consumer's first notice of the cost was on their monthly long-distance telephone bill. AT&T, which has a contractual arrangement to handle all calls from the United States to Moldova, was alerted to the operation in December when it noticed it was billing U.S. customers for thousands of calls to the same numbers in Moldova. Richard Petillo, AT&T's security manager, said the alleged fraud operated from mid-December through early February and affected Internet users from as far away as New Zealand. He said that AT&T was trying to recover some charges from the Moldovan telephone company and from the operators of the web sites. But he said that customers were liable for the charges, even if they were not aware that they were incurring them. "Ultimately we expect all consumers to pay their bills to keep their accounts current," the phone company official said. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 23:52:10 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: FCC Access Fee Reform Proceedings Reply-To: monty@roscom.COM Begin forwarded message: Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 23:24:13 -0500 (EST) From: James Love Subject: Fcc Access Fee Reform Proceedings Info-Policy-Notes - A newsletter available from listproc@tap.org INFORMATION POLICY NOTES February 18, 1997 FCC Policy on Access Charges and the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) James Love, CPT (love@tap.org, 202.387.8030) The FCC has two separate proceedings on the topic of Access Fees by local exchange telephone companies (LECs). The first is a proceeding on Access Charge Reform that was noticed on December 24, 1996. The comment period for this docket (CC Docket No. 96- 262) closed on February 14, 1997. CPT filed comments in both the initial and reply rounds. The second proceeding is a "Notice of Inquiry" into the status of the "enhanced service provider" (ESP) exemption for Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The initial comments on this proceeding are due March 24, 1997, and reply comments are due April 23, 1997. The FCC set up two email addresses to receive informal comments on the proceeding. For the access charge docket, the address is access@fcc.gov. For the notice of inquiry, the address is isp@fcc.gov. The FCC has a very useful Web page on both proceedings at http://www.fcc.gov/isp.html. CPT's Web page on Access Charge Reform is http://www.essential.org/cpt/afr/afr.html. Background: Ever since the AT&T breakup, the FCC and state regulatory bodies have pursued a policy of using hefty per minute charges on long distance calls to keep down the monthly fixed cost of having telephone service. For the "interstate" market, these are called "common carrier line" (CCL) charges, and in recent years, they averaged about 5.7 cents per minute for originating and terminating long distance calls. These charges are imposed on the long distance telephone company by the LEC, and passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices for long distance services. Internet Service Providers and other data processing or value added computer services don't pay network access fees because they are considered "end users" by the FCC, and covered by the Enhanced Services Provider (ESP) exemption. (See Robert Cannon's paper on the ESP exemption at http://www.cais.net/cannon/memos/espart.htm) For many years, several local service telephone companies have tried to get state regulators or the FCC to impose per minute usage fees on modem users. When Netscape and other software companies announced software for Internet telephony, an association representing small independent distance telephone companies asked the FCC to ban the Internet telephony software or regulate its use. The large long distance companies and many (not all) of the LECs told the FCC that the ESP exemption should be eliminated for ISPs. CPT and others objected. The CCL charges are so high they would create havoc in the dial-in market for Internet Access. If ISPs were required to pay the CCL charges for originating an Internet connection, the charge would be $1.67 per hour. This would eliminate all flat rate dial-in subscription plans. Beginning in 1995, CPT told the FCC in several pleadings that the CCL should also be eliminated or reformed for ordinary long distance voice traffic. The CCL is highly inefficient. By using hefty per-minute charges to support the non-traffic sensitive (NTS) costs of local telephone service, long distance companies and others cannot offer innovative services or billing options. CPT was willing to trade increases in the fixed monthly costs of local telephone service for the elimination of the CCL, or to see it reformed in some way that was not so inflexibly linked to per minute usage charges. The CPT position on this issue was controversial among some consumer groups. Gene Kimmelman from Consumers Union initially argued that the usage based CCL was essential to keep the fixed costs of local telephone service low. Kimmelman asserted that the CCL provided a mechanism for cross subsidies between rich and poor consumers. Long distance service was discretionary, the argument ran, but having a telephone in the home was an essential service, and prices should be as low as possible. CPT countered that income was not the only factor that determined long distance usage -- family size and proximity being the main non-income factors. In the universal service docket, CPT presented data showing that as a percent of the monthly bill, differences in consumption of toll and discretionary services were not very different between rich and poor consumers, and that black consumers consumed more toll wasand discretionary services than do whites. Table 1 How do Phone Bills Differ by Income? Average Percent of Income Monthly Toll & Average Quintile Bill* Discretionary* Monthly Bill Poorest 43.70 25.00 57% 2nd 48.40 29.70 61% 3rd 53.40 34.70 64% 4th 57.10 38.40 67% Richest 70.70 52.00 74% White & Other 54.40 35.80 66% Black 64.00 45.30 71% * For 1992. Source: SRCI (From http://www.essential.org/cpt/telecom/us.html) CPT argued the elimination of the CCL will lead to much lower long distance rates. Moreover, CPT argued that it was increasingly necessary to phase out the CCL as we use the "public switched telephone network" PSTN for new services, such as residential connections to the Internet, for which the per-minute CCL charges were a poor proxy for affordability. There are also many other issues that are connected to the access charge and ESP proceedings. The FCC and local regulators are writing rules that allow firms to lease LEC facilities in order to compete for local telephone service, and the entire system of funding universal service is also being rewritten. In each of these areas regulators must decide if per-minute or other usage based charges are the appropriate basis of fees for use of the PSTN. "Traffic sensitive" costs exist, but they aren't as high as one might think. Before Internet traffic became important, the "average cost" of using a switch was about .17 cents per minute, or about 10.2 cents per hour, for some LECs, or about 6 percent of the CCL charge for originating a call. Internet usage has increased the total demand for network usage, but it has also changed the patterns of demand. Where voice peaks are typically around 4 pm, the Internet peak usage is often well after 9 PM -- when voice usage is very limited. The daily "load" on the switch is greater, but this is good news, because longer daily loads result in lower average costs per minute. Moreover, LECs can now deploy technology being marketed by Nortel, Lucent and others, which can completely bypass the LEC's circuit switches and trunks, and transport data from the local loop directly to the ISP in a packet switched network. This radically changes methods of cost allocation in networks because an open data connection doesn't consume bandwidth in the absence of file transfers. (Just staring at the screen doesn't consume bandwidth in a packet switched network). CPT wants the FCC and other regulators to facilitate the migration to affordable full time data (24x7) connections to the Internet. We believe the most practical path today is to use the copper wire local loop, first for ISDN, and later for various xDSL technologies that provide greater bandwidth. CPT has tried to get regulators interested in ISDN pricing, because this is the only digital technology that can be deployed in the mass market right now. The FCC has to decide how to charge consumers for higher bandwidth connections. Some LECs, such as SBC, now double the subscriber line charge for ISDN BRI service. If the FCC eliminates the CCL charges, it must replace at least some of the lost revenue to the LECs. There are many competing proposals -- such as higher fixed monthly charges for the consumer, or new charges for long distance companies, based upon a flat rate for each "line," or something based upon value added or gross revenues. AT&T and some other companies want the FCC to impose a new charge on the use of residential second lines. There are also issues relating to life-line subsidies for the poor, or the degree to which businesses and residences make different contributions to the "joint costs" of the network. The ESP/ISP inquiry is also complex. Do dial-in Internet users impose excessive costs on the network, or does the new Internet traffic actually lower average costs for everyone? CPT, BBN's Fred Goldstein, the Information Technology Industry Council and others have provided the FCC with evidence that dial-in users are not using the network in ways that exceed peak capacity requirements for voice users, that LECs are making substantial profits from deployment of second lines, that LECs have off the shelf methods of dealing with congestion at the terminating ISP end, and that LECs benefit from certain economies in delivering derived channels to ISPs. If ISPs are required to pay for incoming calls, should consumers pay less for making local calls? Should regulators eliminate usage fees on ISDN calls made to ISPs if the ISPs are paying for incoming calls? How would ISPs be charged for incoming calls? On the basis of minutes per connection? Are off-peak usage fees economically inefficient? What does it cost to meter usage? Should fees be based upon a percent of revenues per subscriber? Should regulators distinguish between value added and basic services? Should ISPs be charged separately for Internet telephony? Who would monitor such usage? Would ending the ESP exemption have a significant revenue impact on the LECs? What would it do to the development of the Internet? Isn't the subtle and complex nature of data usage such that it is entirely inappropriate to fund the fixed costs of the local loop through usage based charges? There are also a number of issues relating to LEC strategic behavior. If usage fees become a profit center, will the LECs have an incentive to deploy technology that bypasses traffic sensitive resources (circuit based trunks and switches)? Will excessive access fees permit the LECs to eliminate independent ISPs through predatory pricing? Many of the LECs and the long distance companies are pushing for per-minute fees on ISPs. PacBell and Bell Atlantic/Nynex are among the most aggressive LECs seeking per minute fees on ISPs. There are also some disagreements among LECs. For example, BellSouth told the FCC that with the current CCL charges, it would be a mistake to eliminate the ESP for the ISPs, and BellSouth has also not adopted the "the sky is falling" position being advanced by PacBell and Bell Atlantic/Nynex. The ISPs themselves are just getting organized politically. The main ISP trade association, CIX, is badly co-opted on this issue by the large telcos who have joined CIX. In the absence of an effective ISP voice, a number of computer, software and consumer electronics companies have created the Internet Access Coalition (http://www.internetaccess.org), which has developed rapidly into an effective advocacy effort. This is the group that sponsored the excellent study by Lee L. Selwyn and Joseph W. Laszlo, "The Effect Of Internet Use On The Nation's Telephone Network," which is available on the Internet at (http://www2.itic.org/itic/eti_toc.html). The enormous expression of interest by individuals who sent email for the February 14, 1997 deadline in the Access Charge docket (access@fcc.gov) was an important step in impressing the FCC staff and commission members about the views of the Internet community. It will also be important to comment on the Notice of Inquiry that will examine the IPS's ESP exemption. Email for this round can be sent to isp@fcc.gov. It will also be helpful to file formal written comments. The first round of comments are due by March 24, 1997. It will be particularly helpful to have in the record information on topics such as: 1. How the Internet is used for civic discourse, to exercise free speech, and to promote education. (One might make comparisons to television). 2. How the Internet promotes economic development in the United States. 3. How flat rate local calling has contributed to the high level of residential penetration of Internet services in the United States. 4. What types of information should the FCC obtain from the LECs about network usage and costs. 5. What information the FCC should gather from the LECs and network vendors regarding deployment of higher bandwidth technologies, or the introduction of network solutions for 24x7 residential digital data connections to the Internet. 6. Are the LECs engaging in anticompetitive practices with respect to independent ISPs and other enhanced service providers? CPT will provide additional reports on this important issue. James Love Consumer Project on Technology love@tap.org; 202.387.8030 http://www.essential.org/cpt INFORMATIONPOLICY NOTES is a free Internet newsletter sponsored by the Consumer Project on Technology (CPT). CPT is a project of the Center for Study of Responsive Law, which is run by Ralph Nader. The LISTPROC services are provide by Essential Information. Archives of Info-Policy-Notes are available from http://www.essential.org/listproc/info-policy-notes/ CPT's Web page is http://www.essential.org/cpt Subscription requests to info-policy-notes to listproc@tap.org with the message: subscribe info-policy-notes Jane Doe CPT can both be reached off the net at P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036, Voice: 202/387-8030; Fax: 202/234-5176 ------------------------------ From: Bill Goodin Subject: UCLA Short Course on "Telecommunications Networking" Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 17:46:00 -0800 On May 19-23, 1997, UCLA Extension will present the short course, "Telecommunications Networking: Local, Metropolitan, and Wide-Area Networks", on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles. The instructors are Izhak Rubin, PhD, Professor, Electrical Engineering Department, UCLA, and Michael A. Erlinger, PhD, Professor, Department of Computer Science, Harvey Mudd College. This course presents the integration of communication, switching, networking, traffic, service, computer engineering, and management principles, and highlights continuing trends in telecommunications network technologies, architectures, planning, management, evaluation and design. Elements essential to the implementation and control of cost-effective, reliable, and responsive telecommunication networks are thoroughly discussed. Key networking implementations and experimentations are presented and evaluated. Test cases involving multimedia networking over FDDI, Ethernet, Token-Ring, TDMA, ALOHA, Wireless, internetworked packet-switched networks, and B-ISDN ATM networks are demonstrated using the IRI Planyst program. Specific topics include: network fundamentals; narrow-band and broadband ISDN services; communication and network protocols; multi-access algorithms, schemes and protocols; local area networks; internetworking; high-speed fiber-optic local area networks; high-speed metropolitan area networks; networking methods for cellular wireless networks; network management; ATM network protocols and architectures; ATM switch architectures; traffic, flow and congestion control by ATM wide-area networks; and ultra high-speed communications networks. The course is designed for communications, computer, telecommunications, and system engineers; managers; system analysts; project leaders and scientists. UCLA Extension has presented this highly successful short course since 1982. The course fee is $1495, which includes all course materials. These materials are for participants only, and are not for sale. For additional information and a complete course description, please contact Marcus Hennessy at: (310) 825-1047 (310) 206-2815 fax mhenness@unex.ucla.edu http://www.unex.ucla.edu/shortcourses This course may also be presented on-site at company locations. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 12:13:29 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Pegasus Mail for Windows" by Kocmoud/Pierce/Stegman BKPEGMLW.RVW 961022 "Pegasus Mail for Windows", David J. Kocmoud/J. Matthew Pierce/Michael O. Stegman, 1996, 0-13-261900-8 %A David J. Kocmoud david-kocmoud@tamu.edu %A J. Matthew Pierce matt.pierce@tamu.edu %A Michael O. Stegman mstegman@li.net %C One Lake St., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458 %D 1996 %G 0-13-261900-8 %I Prentice Hall %O +1-201-236-7139 fax: +1-201-236-7131 beth_hespe@prenhall.com %P 472 %T "Pegasus Mail for Windows" I don't understand this book. I mean, I understand the *book*. It is a perfectly clear and understandable set of documentation for Pegasus Mail, its functions, uses, and advanced uses. No problems there. No, what I don't understand is why the book *exists*. After all, David Harris, who created Pegasus mail, provides and maintains it free of charge. (Yes, you get a copy of Pegasus Mail with the book, as well as instructions on where and how to get the latest version off the net.) The only way for Harris to make money is to charge for the documentation for his program. So why is he enthusiastic enough to support a *competing* set of documentation that he not only supports the publication but actually writes a forward for the book? (Then again, someone recently asked why I provide these reviews, and I haven't got an answer for that either ...) copyright Robert M. Slade, 1996 BKPEGMLW.RVW 961022 ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa or Jeff) Subject: Sanford Wallace (the "Spam King") to Start Own Spam Service Date: 21 Feb 1997 00:46:31 GMT Organization: Net Access BBS The {Philadelphia Inquirer} reported (2/19/97, Business Page 1) that Sanford Wallace, notorious for his unsuccessful court actions against Compuserve and AOL, will open his own service for mass mailings. Most online services and ISPs prohibit bulk e-mailings and will terminate such customers. Wallace is president of Cyber Promotions. He charges $50 for a 3 line ad packed with other ads, to $2,500 for a one-time 40 line exclusive e-mail addresses Wallace has amassed. [I can't believe paying customers respond to these things, at least enough to pay the cost.] Some critics say unsolicited e-mail should be deemed illegal under the federal regulations that prohibit unsolicited faxes. [Sounds good to me!] Private Citizen, a 2,000 member junk-mail fighting organization in Naperville, Ill, has set up a WWW page (http://www.ctct.com) where those who wish to be removed from Cyber Promotions' mailing list can leave their email addresses. Wallace said he was cooperating with them. IMHO, such guys like Wallace ought to be thrown in jail for trespassing. Unlike a letter mailed to my house or business, which costs me nothing, email DOES cost me. I pay for my online time, and time spent filtering through junk email and Usenet posts costs me. If my ISP has to increase his system size to accomodate the increased junk traffic, those costs get passed on to me. It is well known that junk email clogs the Internet because (1) a lot of messages are undeliverable from old addresses and generate returns, and (2) the spammers use forged headers, so the returned mail (and complaints from recipients) get bounced back. So, what starts out as a single message can mushroom, and we Internet users are paying for it. Wallace has also shown incredible arrogance and disrespect to people. He has filed lawsuits (and lost) demanding he be allowed to invade private space. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 10:32:57 EST From: Danny Burstein Subject: Cyber Promotions, Evil, Evil, EVIL Per an Associated Press story 20-Feb-1997: New Network Makes Bulk E-Mail Easy By JENNIFER BROWN Associated Press Writer PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- It's about to get much easier for advertisers to send junk e-mail on the Internet. Cyber Promotions Inc. will launch the first bulk e-mail friendly Internet provider in the nation on March 17. It will allow computer users to send millions of commercial ads -- also known as spam -- for a single monthly fee. (The article continues with a discussion of how spammers are frowned upon by most ISPs and how they get their accounts canceled left and right as soon as they start their little pursuits.) "What people are doing is jumping around from one (Internet provider) toanother, and they don't have a secure home. We're going to give them a home," said Cyber Promotion founder Sanford Wallace. (snip) Wallace, known as the "Spam King," said Cyber Promotions is an extension of the Internet advertising service he has run since 1994. The company sends up to 4 million e-mail ads each day. ------------------------------ From: Judith Oppenheimer Subject: Re: 800/888 Confusion Messes up Advertising Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 09:59:43 -0500 Organization: ICB Toll Free News Reply-To: j.oppenheimer@worldnet.att.net Pat, not only did John Q. Public get it wrong -- John Q. Press did too. Multiplying and compounding the problem. I know we've disagreed on this, but twice now you've rewritten a posting I've submitted - the first message the one you misplaced, and now the equally explanatory correction. The nature of the problem: where the cost and embarassment from 800 vs. 888 lies - is with the attempt to equate 888 with the well-branded 800. 800 is not just another area code - 800 IS THE TOLL FREE BRAND. These problems - along with their inherent costs, confusions, and lost business, will continue to happen. Both the advertisers, and consumers, will suffer. Short-sightedly, so will the industry. (How much traffic revenue did AT&T make on 888 NOT BUSY, versus what it could have made?) 888 was, and is, a big mistake. Judith Oppenheimer ICB Toll Free News http://www.thedigest.com/icb/ ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #48 *****************************