Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id IAA12759; Sun, 4 May 1997 08:50:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 4 May 1997 08:50:04 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199705041250.IAA12759@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #110 TELECOM Digest Sun, 4 May 97 08:50:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 110 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Carte Blanche to Steal (Judith Oppenheimer) NYNEX Rushes Massachusetts Into New NPAs (John Cropper) Commentary on Spam and it's Cost to Recipients (John DeBert) UUNET Pulling Peering Agreements; Now Charging (Monty Solomon) Another Spam With Free Cassette (Stan Schwartz) Review of Book on Long Distance Competition (Jack Decker) Marconi 6200 Microwave Test Set For Sale (Ed Coglio) 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. Write and tell us how you qualify: * subscriptions@telecom-digest.org * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org (WWW/http only!) They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 03 May 1997 12:44:04 -0400 From: Judith Oppenheimer Reply-To: joppenheimer@icbtollfree.com Organization: ICB Toll Free News Subject: Carte Blanche to Steal FCC grants carriers carte blanche to steal what they've been buying. Over the course of the last three years, The Big Three promulgated the most offensive anti-brokering (read: anti-subscriber rights) language in the Toll Free Industry Guidelines, which are now essentially codified by the FCC Toll Free Access Codes Order. (CC Docket No. 95-155) During that same period, the Big Three -- AT&T, MCI and Sprint -- have been the most active and frequent buyers of toll-free numbers from subscribers. This is not an accusation --- it is an observation of fact, with literally hundreds if not thousands of substantiating transaction documents residing with subscribers throughout the U.S. The new FCC 800 Order (see ICB Cover Story -- http://www.icbtollfree.com -- or in case of server inertia, http://www.thedigest.com/icb/) mandates that carriers confiscate toll-free numbers from subscribers where there is a presumption of hoarding or brokering. The parameters of hoarding and brokering are not defined, except to implicate a very broad palate of normal business activity. Due process is not even addressed. Hence, where carriers have routinely pursued and obtained toll-free numbers for sums ranging from low five figures to mid six figures, they now have carte blanche to simply take what they want. Charged by the FCC with returning confiscated numbers to the available pool, the pilfering carrier has only to place the desired number in the available pool and then immediately pick it up, to comply -- and take off with its ill gotten gains. Good relationships and customer considerations notwithstanding, the friendliest of carriers could become a shark if its immediate need supersedes the value of your relationship with them. Furthermore, the carrier comes up looks rosey -- complying with the FCC -- and you look guilty as charged. The onus of proof would be on you. The only logical conclusion we can draw: You never know when one of your toll-free numbers might spell something invaluable to one of these top three buyers. Your best insurance would be to remove your toll-free numbers from AT&T, MCI and Sprint. Judith Oppenheimer Publisher ICB Toll Free News ICB TOLL FREE NEWS - 800/888/global800 news, analysis, advice. http://www.icbtollfree.com, http://www.thedigest.com/icb/ Judith Oppenheimer - 800 The Expert, ph 212 684-7210, fx 212 684-2714 mailto:j.oppenheimer@worldnet.att.net, mailto:icb@juno.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well honestly Judith, I never could understand why anyone would have their 800 number serviced by one of the big three when there are much smaller carriers such as Call America who provide *so much more* service for less cost. Consider all the hassles in even getting the big three to turn on an 800 number; the time delay before they can get it running, getting it moved from one termination point to another, etc. I have an 800 number with Call Home America (a division of Frontier) which has always worked fine. Their customer service is great. I have another 800 number with Call America (not to be confused with Call Home America) which I have discussed here a few times which also is extremely flexible with lots of extra features attached, etc. Ernie Strong is the contact point for Call America's MyLine Service. This is the one I discussed here several weeks ago with the 800 numbers with call forwarding/call waiting/three-way calling/outbound calling/wakeup service/voicemail/ callback stuff all attached as part of the one price. I hope readers who did not contact him earlier will do so now. I've used the service for years, and I remember years ago when I used to get 800 service from AT&T with all their foolishness. You have illustrated a good point Judith; just one more reason to let the big players do their own thing and take your telecom needs to smaller companies who appreciate your business. PAT] ------------------------------ From: John Cropper Subject: NYNEX Rushes Massachusetts Into New NPAs Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 14:32:05 -0400 Organization: Mindspring Enterprises Due to an "extreme jeopardy" situation declared by BellCore for area codes 508 and 617, NYNEX is advancing the premissive and mandatory dialing dates for both the 508/978 split and 617/781 split. BOTH area codes will split effective September 1, 1997, with a ninety-day permissive dialing period. Original plans had called for a February 1998 permissive dialing period, but the recent BellCore announcement forced a reassesment of NPA relief. Exchange lists (as released by BellCore) for both splits can be located at LINCS. John Cropper, Webmaster voice: 888.76.LINCS LINCS fax: 888.57.LINCS P.O. Box 277 mailto:jcropper@lincs.net Pennington, NJ 08534-0277 http://www.lincs.net/ The latest compiled area code information is available from us! NPAs, NXXs, Dates, all at http://www.lincs.net/areacode/ ------------------------------ From: John DeBert Subject: Commentary on Spam and it's Cost to Recipients Date: Sat, 03 May 1997 14:53:57 -0700 Organization: hypatia.com Parasites on the Internet: The senders of unsolicited commercial email and "spam" (both referred to hereinafter as "Spam") seem to me more as parasites, hucksters and scam or con artists than legitimate businesses. They send out their spams to addresses harvested indiscriminately from Usenet postings, mailing lists, archived material and other sources, regardless of any interests of the recipient. They post to multiple newsgroups, sometimes to every newsgroup, using resources belonging to others without paying for them to distribute their adverts. They use far more than a reasonable share of resources. They falsify and forge mail header lines, inserting false From: and Received: lines to conceal the source of the message, use other site's mailers to send their messages and provide no legitimate contact name, address or phone number. They evade criticism by using deceptive tactics as described above, and prevent direct responses to their mail, forcing people to use roundabout ways of contacting them and make it harder for people to request removal from their lists. I question whether most spammers are even legitimate businesses. They seem to go to great lenghts to conceal their identities and evade those seeking to find out who they are. Were these spammers to do these things using other, more traditional means such as the mails, they would have been shut down, fined and jailed. Yet on the Internet, they seem quite happy to disregard the laws enforced for the traditional media and quite happy to set aside ethics for a dollar or two. There have been similar scams using traditional media: Sending official looking letters that looked exactly like mail sent from government, sending important-looking mail with postage due, sending mail with false return addresses, et cetera. All these are now illegal and carry stiff penalties for violators. They lack the ethics of legitimate business. They are unconcerned whether their spam costs their recipients some money and they don't care about harming the reputation of people who have the addresses that they falsify or the sites that they use to distribute their junk. Spammers get a free ride, since all they have to pay for is their connection, not for the emormous amount of mail that they distribute. For them, being a parasite is profitable. Unlike spammers, many people must pay for their mail, whether sending or receiving, in the form of connect-time charges, quota fees, or even indirectly in the form of higher rates as their service provider raises fees to support better and larger mail systems to accomodate the huge volume of mail sent by spammers. Sometimes, as a result of spam, some people are denied services because the spam has caused their total file sizes to exceed quota, the mailer crashed due to overload, et cetera. In essence, spammers are spending other people's money, no, they're stealing other people's money to make their profit. Spam "Kings", much like Sanford "Spamford" Wallace, sell their services to unsuspecting and naive businesses hoping to advertise more widely. These spam kings fail to mention to their customers that spamming can cause harm to their business instead of improving it. The spam kings also help their customers unwittingly commit fraud by teaching them how to falsify headers, etc., or sell them software to do it automatically. Their customers end up with a reputation as bad as the spam kings and do not gain the customers they had hoped or had been promised. They are shocked at the hostility directed toward them for doing something that they were led to believe was legitimate and ethical. Spam kings claim to be providing a legitimate service. Yet were they to do the same in traditonal media, they would end up in prison, convicted of numerous misdemeanors, felonies and federal crimes. What they are doing instead is taking advantage of a lack of law or enforcement to engage in or encourage hucksterism, fraud and other deceptive and unethical practices. They're the modern equivalent to the snake oil peddlers, real estate shysters and used car salesmen of old, with one key difference: Everyone else is burdened by the majority of their business expense, not them. When it comes to the Internet, more than anywhere else, there are more than enough suckers to squeeze money from, whether it be a business looking for a new way of advertising or someone interested in a product or service. "Let the buyer beware" implies far more than anywhere else. What can be done? People are taking matters into their own hands. There are people who bombard the apparent senders with huge amounts of mail, flood their hosts with SYN messages, fax threats, etc. Some have undertaken it upon themselves to cancel posted advertisements. Some have gone so far as to block mail from known spammer sites and even all other unauthenticated sites. And some have complex filters in place to block mail that appears to be spam. But bombarding the apparent senders often strikes at people who are themselves victims of these scams. SYN flooding causes problems for a lot of people who have nothing to do with the spam, whether directly or indirectly. Blocking mail and even all connections from apparent spam sites may also block sites that have nothing to with spam, as they may have been broken into by a spammer, or inherited a spammer's IP address. Most such knee-jerk responses to spammers often have embarrassing consequences and make the person reacting look an idiot or fool. Some people announce that they will accept spam for a fee. It seems to work, sometimes, but not with spam kings. Others invoke federal laws designed to protect fax machines and cellular customers from solicitation, with somewhat more success but it has yet to be decided in court whether a computer system or network can be considered a fax machine as defined under law. Yet spammers have adapted. They forge headers, falsify From: and return addresses. They invade other site's mailers to distribute their junk. They block or divert incoming mail and use many other tactics, besides. Sometimes, when they don't get what they want, they threaten to sue to force people to carry their junk mail for free. A Modest Proposal: Extend federal prohibitions of fax and cellular phone solicitations to computers and networks. Spam does cost money and can deny use of computers and services by filling disks and quotas, consuming bandwidth on networks and even wasting paper. Admittedly, the expense of carrying and receiving spam seem intangible but it no more intangible than using any other means of electronic communication for soliciting: It still affects one's pocketbook and that is the point of view that should be looked at, rather than the point of view of convenience. Rather than going ballistic and harassing and threatening spammers, make complaints to law enforcement, politicians and to the spammers' service providers. Publish the spam, and the spammers' identities, most particularly if the spammer is a business, or if it appears to be a fraud. There's quite a bit that can be done. The Internet is still a frontier and the unscrupulous critters in it need to be placed on notice that their behaviour is intolerable, and that there are indeed enforceable penalties for crossing the line. copyright 1997. Electronic redistribution In whole permitted with correct attributions and without fee. Telecom Digest use in whole or in part permitted. All other rights reserved. onymouse@hypatia.com SPAM/Unsolicited commercial email is an unwanted expense. I think I should pass on the expense to the ones who imposed it on me and put an end to their free ride in my pocketbook. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I still say the best method is to financially ruin them by any means possible; usually this means using the toll free number they provide (sometimes) or as we will discover in another message in this issue, by requesting 'free samples'. Read on for more details in a later message. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 02:16:36 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: UUNET Pulling Peering Agreements; Now Charging? Reply-To: monty@roscom.COM Begin forwarded message: Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 22:46:47 -0400 (EDT) From: Gordon Cook Subject: UUNET Pulling Peering Agreements & replacing them with charging under non-disclosure? I have just had a phone call from a particpant in the news conference of the Well. What UUNET is doing to many of its peers, including the Well, is now clear. According to my caller, Dave Hughes, it has served notice to many if not most of its peers that, in late May and early June, it will either terminate their peering session or that the peers will have to start paying for the privilege. How much will be charged and under what conditions is unknown. Why? Because the unfortunate peers either have to **sign non disclosure agreements before** they even sit down with UUNET or simply be cut off. I first heard an opaque reference to this from a nationally known figure a couple of months ago. In the last ten days I have heard separately and privately from three different people one of whom is directly affected. I asked him to call me. He never did. Now I think I understand why. Hughes said that David (?) Hollub who is responsible for the Well's connectivity and has just been fired by Bruce Katz the well's owner has revealed in a well conference what UUNET is doing and that the story made it into the {Wall Street Journal} today. I will be sending Hughes a summary understanding of what I think this means that he will post on the Well inviting national journalists to call me for whatever information/insight I can give them into the story. I would especially like to begin hearing from those directly affected. Please detail very precisely what restrictions you place on the information you send me. First it was AGIS (but who cares about AGIS?). Now UUNET. Tomorrow who? MCI? As UUNET and others of the big five move to consolidate their markets ... let UUNET put the smaller national backbones against the wall and whom do the rest of ISP's have to rely on? Those ISPs who did not get hit in UUNET's first round of cuts. Will you get it in the neck in the second or the third round? The COOK Report on Internet For subsc. pricing & more than 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA ten megabytes of free material (609) 882-2572 (phone & fax) visit http://cookreport.com/ Internet: cook@cookreport.com On line speech of critics under attack by Ewing NJ School Board, go to http://cookreport.com/sboard.shtml ------------------------------ From: Stan Schwartz Subject: Another Spam With Free Samples Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 19:28:47 -0400 I received this today. Feel free to snip the content, but I thought I'd make digest readers aware of a toll free number that they want to be sure to call and ask for information and a free cassette. Now make sure to use your correct address when requesting your cassette, otherwise mail will be returned to sender after all that money for postage would have been spent. From: milteam@prodigy.net[SMTP:milteam@prodigy.net] Sent: Saturday, May 03, 1997 4:54 PM Subject: GUESS WHO'S SLEEPING IN YOUR BED ??? From: milteam@prodigy.net * * * * * You "MITE" Be Surprised! * * * * * * * * * Allergy sufferer's worst NIGHTMARE! * * * * [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Much nonsense about medical problems being cured by using an MLM approach to selling whatever product it is they are selling ... all deleted here; it went on for a couple thousand more lines. Now for the important part; and make sure you get all the details correct when you call the toll free number to order your free cassette tape. Following that, a look at the headers which came with this crap. PAT] ************************************** CALL NOW for your FREE cassette! TOLL-FREE (888)403-0307 24hrs. OR E-mail your Name, Address and Telephone Number w/area code: milteam@juno.com ************************************** P.S. With 1 (800) ordering -- no distributor sign-up fee -- no front loading -- no group volume requirements -- and reasonably priced, superior quality product line, its easy to see why we're the highest rated MLM company in history and one of the fastest growing young companies in the industry. --------------------- Headers -------------------------------- >From milteam@prodigy.net Sat May 3 15:51:17 1997 Return-Path: Received: from mail-gw2.pacbell.net (mail-gw2.pacbell.net [206.13.28.53]) by mrin46.mail.aol.com (8.8.5/8.8.5/AOL-1.0.1) with ESMTP id PAA00169; Sat, 3 May 1997 15:51:04 -0400 (EDT) From: milteam@prodigy.net Received: from David (whx-ca9-14.ix.netcom.com [205.187.202.110]) by mail-gw2.pacbell.net (8.8.5/8.7.1) with SMTP id MAA06600; Sat, 3 May 1997 12:50:08 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 12:50:08 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199705031950.MAA06600@mail-gw2.pacbell.net> Subject: GUESS WHO'S SLEEPING IN YOUR BED ??? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You all know what needs to be done. I do not have to elaborate further. If you need a few cassette tapes, order as many as you want. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 03 May 1997 00:53:16 -0400 From: Jack Decker Subject: Review of Book on Long Distance Competition You might be interested in the article/review at this URL: http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg20n1r1.html The title is: "Phone Bill Too High? Blame the FCC." Subtitle: "The Failure of Antitrust and Regulation to Establish Competition in Long-Distance Telephone Services." ------------------------------ From: Ed Coglio Subject: Marconi 6200 Microwave Test Set For Sale Date: Sat, 02 May 1997 20:15:07 -0700 Organization: SatNet Marconi 6200 Microwave test set for sale: - color display - useable to 20 Ghz - TDR and frequency sweep capability - power meter and counter - 4 scalar inputs - can display 4 measurements simultaneously - includes 6581 cable test head and case - 6910 and 6230 power sensors - all interconnect cables - manual This instrument is in pristine condition and current calibration is good to August 97. Excellent for use by tower crew on new installs. As accurate as the HP network analyzer and much more transportable. Asking mid $30's. Serious inquiries only ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #110 ******************************