Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA25878; Tue, 30 Sep 1997 09:03:21 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 09:03:21 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709301303.JAA25878@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #265 TELECOM Digest Tue, 30 Sep 97 09:03:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 265 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Toll Free Domains (Greg Monti) Major Phone Cut in Mississauga, Ontario (David Leibold) Spam Analysis (oldbear@arctos.com) Now There is Spam in the Chinese Language (Robert Casey) Cellular Phone Purchase (Lisa Hancock) Just for Fun: The Payphone Project (oldbear@arctos.com) Long Distance Wholesale Club Free Calling Offer (Eli Mantel) Re: Spamford Leaving Won't Solve the Problem (J.F. Mezei) Re: Spamford Leaving Won't Solve the Problem (Perry Quan) Re: Spamford Leaving Won't Solve the Problem (J.D. Baldwin) Re: Spamford Leaving Won't Solve the Problem (Jeremy Radlow) Re: Spamford Rides Again! (Bill Walker) 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: * telecom-request@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. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 00:18:51 -0400 From: Greg Monti Subject: Toll Free Domains I've been reading with interest Judith Oppenheimer's postings to TELECOM Digest advocating a concept of toll-free domains. Correct me if I'm wrong. You advocate that business sales departments and customer service centers should be the only parties allowed to have NANP telephone numbers beginning with the magical digits 1-800. All other users currently having 1-800 numbers shall be summarily booted out into one or more other Special Access Codes, such as 1-888 or 1-877. When a new user requests a toll free number from his or her long distance carrier of choice, he or she will be asked (under penalty of what?) just what the new number will be used for. If it will be for a sales department, the user will get a number beginning with 1-800. If it is for, say, a pocket pager, the user will get one beginning with, say 1-888. If the user *lies* to get a number beginning with 1-800 and routes it to a pocket pager, what happens then? Does the customer go to Telecom Jail and do penance by being strapped to a step-by-step switch until his or her hearing is nonexistent? What new government agency will administer this punishment? Will the taxpayers pay for this enforcement? In spite of its unworkability, doesn't your plan of dividing toll free numbers into groups based on what they are used for simply postpone the inevitable? Even if all cell phones, personal toll free numbers, and pagers are kicked out of 1-800, won't 1-800 fill up eventually anyway with legitimate sales departments and customer service users? What do we do when the 7,900,001st customer calls up and wants a new 1-800 number and all of them are gone? Do we open a new code, say 1-866, and assign them a number there? Suppose the customer chooses 1-866-FLOWERS? Or suppose 1-866-FLOWERS is *chosen randomly* for the customer? Doesn't that put us right back where we are today? What will your solution be then? Actually, I am largely in agreement with you. I say: - Let customers have whatever toll free numbers they want. Customers should have ownership rights in their toll free numbers. - Let 'em hoard as many numbers as they want. - Let 'em pay $100 for two years to reserve a number, same as they do with domain names from InterNIC. The $100 charge would apply to telcos as well as to end user customers. Every time a number is removed from the pool and taken posession of by any entity, it's another $100. No refunds if used less than two years. When it changes hands from telco to end user customer, it's another $100. Every time it changes hands, another $100 to the database administrator. - Let people buy, sell, reserve, lease and trade toll free numbers at will, at any price the market will bear. It's like concert tickets. Scalpers welcome. - Let the owner of 1-800-FLOWERS sue the owner of 1-888-FLOWERS to enforce his property rights, just like they would do with a real estate boundary or a brand name logo. Perhaps in another five years, people will finally get it through their thick heads that toll free numbers are not "free." They are premium-priced long distance, which is marked up and charged back to you, the consumer. By then, maybe the FCC will have come to its senses and dropped the distorted policy of subsidies that is driven by exhorbitant access charges. Domestic long distance calls will be two cents a minute during weekdays. Hell, that's almost free. Greg Monti Jersey City, New Jersey, USA gmonti@mindspring.com http://www.mindspring.com/~gmonti ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 00:18:56 EDT From: David Leibold Reply-To: David Leibold Subject: Major Phone Cut in Mississauga, Ontario A major cable cut occurred in the Mississauga, Ontario phone service over the weekend, affecting the Bell Canada Streetsville exchange (Pearl Street DS0 central office, at least as of a few years ago). Listed NPA 905 NXXes affected are 542, 567, 812, 813, 819, 821, 826, 858. CBC Television news tonight reported that some phones could be out of order until Friday, though most service should resume before that. The reports showed temporary payphone setups in affected neighbourhoods, apparently with free local calls available during the inconvenience. An early report with some of the details was in the Toronto Star, 28 September 1997, which should be web-accessible for about a month: www2.thestar.com/thestar/back_issues/ED19970928/news/970928A04_CI-PHONE28.html (or failing that URL, go through www.thestar.ca into Back Issues...) And the moral of the story ... "Call Before You Dig" (the telco repair/cable locating folks, that is). ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Sep 1997 19:02:54 -0400 From: The Old Bear Subject: Spam Analysis Pat: The following is something I did about two months ago to get a better understanding of the kind of "unsolicitied commercial email" that is being spewed into my mailbox. Readers of TELECOM Digest may find it of interest, particularly the observations about: 1. the *size* of the typical spam email message versus the that of the typical legitimate individual message; 2. the volume of spam compared with legitimate messages (other than subscribed mailing lists and other solicited bulk mail); 3. the apparent evolution of a subset of standard English punctuation which might be called 'spammese'. From: oldbear@arctos.com (The Old Bear) Subject: the case of the telltale exclamation point ! Date: Fri, 1 Aug 1997 18:48:18 -0400 Since the beginning of the year, rather than deleting email SPAM, I have been filtering it off into a file called "SPAM" for purposes of intellectual curiosity. Well, it being a slow Friday afternoon, I decided to do some analysis. First, let me say that I already filter the 'from:' field to sort mail from subscribed lists and newsletters into appropriate folders. That reduces the mail volume in my general in-box considerably. I also filter mail from about ten individuals from whom I regularly expect to receive mail into a priority folder. That left 2,195 messages as "general" in-box material, or for the 213 days, an average of 10.3 unclassified messages per day. Of these 2,195 messages, I had manually sorted out 715 "spam" messages, or roughly 32% of the total unclassified message traffic. It should be noted that on a 'number of bytes' basis, the percentage of "spam" is much larger, totally 3,385KB of 6,809KB, or 50%. This means that the average "spam" email is 4.74KB compared with the average "real" e-mail being only 2.31KB including headers. A very scary statistic. Having noticed that spammers are not only verbose, but have a propensity to use needless exclamation points in the subject line, I decided to see what would happen if I filtered out any email message from the unclassified message traffic which contained a "!" in the subject line. Of 715 spams, 262 messages were selected -- a detection rate of 37%. Of 1480 "real" messages, 75 were selected -- a false positive rate of only 5%. A further examination of the "false positives" showed that 22 of them related to the contact management software "ACT!" made by Symantec and about which I had been in correspondence with several other users at one point earlier in the year. Obviously, an unfortunate choice of product name. Another 20 messages were replies to subject lines containing "!" which I foolishly had originated myself, such as "Happy birthday!" and "thanks!" -- something I pledge never to do again. That brings random "false positives" to 33, or 2% which may or may not be an acceptable level to any particular email user. In summary, based upon my sample (your mileage may vary), just filtering for exclamation points intercepts 37% of incoming "spam" while erroneously intercepting only 2% of bona fide message traffic. Personally, manually trashing ten messages per day is not so onerous that I would risk losing 2% of my valid unclassified email. But it does provide some indication of how "intelligent" filtering might be possible under current circumstances. Unfortuantely, 'professional' spammers eventually will figure out the filtering algorithms much like professional tax advisors have figured out what provokes an electronic IRS audit flag, or how shrewd job applicants have figured out what will get their resumes flagged by personnel departments which use electronic scanning. Even so, most of the annoying amateur multi-level marketing and chain letter garbage is so stupidly constructed that taking it out of the mailstream should be relatively easy -- even though doing it at the end point remains a tremendously inefficient use of resources. Cheers, The Old Bear ------------------------------ From: wa2ise@netcom.com (Robert Casey) Subject: Now There is Spam in the Chinese Language Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services Date: Sun, 28 Sep 1997 21:01:56 GMT Yesterday in "rec.audio.tubes" saw a post that was unreadable (not just a language that uses the ASCII character set, but special code to send info to special reader software to write the message in Chinese characters). Figured that some audiophile in Japan or similar posted something related to audio, and just forgot to translate it first into English and ASCII. Dumb move, but I've done dumb things before myself. Posted a followup asking for English. Another person in the newsgroup says that it's just a spam message from Taiwan. Nothing to do with audio. A good friend of mine owns an advertising and PR firm. Talking about the Internet with him, told him "don't ever send mass e-mail (spam) because it will just anger millions of people". He hasen't gotten on the 'net yet, and unsure how to advertise (properly) using it. Told him about SPAM and how hated it is. I wanted to make sure he doesn't get sold a "bill of goods" by some spammer "service" and cause him (and all of us) a lot of grief! AFAIK, a web page is an acceptable method of advertising something. It doesn't get in your face like SPAM does. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Cellular Phone Purchase Date: 28 Sep 1997 19:35:50 GMT Organization: Net Access BBS Well, I finally broke down and joined modern civilization. I bought a cellular phone today. On the one hand, it's pretty slick. They gave me the phone and after a few minutes charging, it was ready to use. On the other hand, dealing with them was very frustrating. These phones are very expensive to use, and getting accurate rates from them was hard because I kept getting conflicting information. * One brochure said I was billed from SND to END, regardless if the called party answered. Another brochure said busy/no answer aren't billed. This could mean a BIG difference in cost, esp since they bill by the minute, including fractional minutes. I don't want to waste a $1 on a busy signal. That's ridiculous. * One brochure described a large extended home area of 59c/minute for all calling plans. Another brochure said the Basic Plan didn't offer that. Sales people were also contradictory on this. * Sales people were clueless on how and when "long distance" charges were billed for calls within the home area. The home area is rather large, and it's possible it may be cheaper for me to use my cellular than my regular long distance carrier off peak. Also, they were contradictory if their long distance charges were _in addition to_ or _instead of_ the regular air time fees. * No one could tell me how to use the phone outside its home area, if or when I'd want to switch "A" to "B", or how I'm billed. I received no information on roaming. They said if I were, say in Chicago and had my phone on, someone could dial my number and reach me. I find that surprising. * Per my request, they sold me an auxillary battery. But later I found out there's a lighter yet longer-life one (albeit at higher cost), that I wanted. I assume they'll let me exchange. * One salesperson said I could use the phone while charging off a wall outlet. Another said no. (It appears not, given the design. However, the automobile charger appears to be designed to work that way.) * They couldn't tell me the cost to replace the phone itself it was stolen or destroyed during my "contract year". They said it depended on whatever was on promotion at the time. * One salesperson said there's a $15 charge to switch between plans, another said no charge. * There's a "landline charge" per call. Some said 10c, some said 12c, they all said "sometimes you're charged". By this point I was so confused I didn't bother to ask, other than to ensure it was per call. * The same carrier gave out contradictory brochures at different locations. I bought this phone primarily for use in emergency, I have little need for it otherwise. It appears given the billing system, that's how I'll use it. (Or I guess I should said I won't use it.) Unfortunately, pay phone charges have become just as uncertain, even with a traditional "Bell" payphone. In some cases, even at $1/minute, it may be cheaper to use the cellular for quick calls than a payphone since they hit you with calling card charges up front. (For long calls, the payphone is cheaper.) You know, I wonder if the Bell's are happy to let pay phone service go away, since they'll make more money off cellular. Poor pay phone service (COCOTS, unable to ring back, unpredictable charges) is a big reason I got this phone. Lastly, I didn't see any models with rotary dialing. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think regarding the billing time the clock does run from 'SPEND to END' however if the dialed number is busy or does not answer then you are not charged. If the party does answer then you are billed from when you first started the call, i.e. first pressed the S[P]END button. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Sep 1997 00:07:18 -0400 From: The Old Bear Subject: Just for Fun: The Payphone Project Amazing how people on the internet spend their time. TELECOM Digest readers may be amused by this web site, as announced by its webmaster below: --- Forwarded message follows --- From: sorabji@SPAMLESS.paranoia.com (Mark A. Thomas) Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.announce Subject: The Payphone Project Date: 25 Sep 1997 00:25:07 -0400 Lines: 13 The Payphone Project, on the internet for over two years, has been re-built and re-organized. Use this site to find payphone numbers from throughout the United States and Canada, and add your own payphone numbers to this ever-growing collection. THE PAYPHONE PROJECT http://www.paranoia.com/~sorabji/resources/payphones/ ------------------------------ From: Eli Mantel Subject: Long Distance Wholesale Club Free Calling Offer Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 19:44:01 PDT Several months ago, I got an offer to use the services of Long Distance Wholesale Club (a divsion of Telco Communications) by dialing their 10xxx carrier access code. They offered interstate calls at 9.5 cents a minute, subject to a monthly fee which would be waived the first month. Additionally, they promised 20 minutes of free interstate calls. I made about six hours of calls under their plan in the first month, and as promised, I was billed at 9.5 cents a minute and there was no monthly fee. However, I never got the 20 free minutes, and each time I called, they said they would put in a credit for me, but it would take two months to show up on my Pac Bell bill. It's now six months since that first bill came, and I'm getting the same useless story from Telco Communications. I've called Pac Bell, and they're apparently going to resolve it. Admittedly, there's less than $2 at stake here, but I'm wondering whether this is an isolated incident, or whether they've given anybody the credit without having to demand it, or if they only gave the credit to people who used their service after the first month. I would appreciate hearing from anybody else who took Telco up on this deal. Eli Mantel aka the Cagey Consumer www.geocities.com/wallstreet/5395 ------------------------------ From: J.F. Mezei <[non-spam]jfmezei@videotron.ca> Subject: Re: Spamford Leaving Won't Solve the Problem Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 18:51:05 -0500 Organization: VTL Reply-To: [non-spam]jfmezei@videotron.ca >> Obviously Spamford was one of their leaders, >> but how many of the vermin still remain to be exterminated? Any >> guesstimates? PAT] Isn't SPAMFORD aware of all the hatred against him? If extremely unpopular politicians fear for their lives, shouldn't he? Does anyone know if he has to take extra steps to protect his own security? Or is he so naive to think that he is popular and is doing the world a great service/favour? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 23:59:21 -0400 From: Perry Quan Subject: Re: Spamford Leaving Won't Solve the Problem Michael P. Deignan wrote in article : [snip] > list of company names, telephone/fax numbers, and addresses would be > really helpful. If a sizeable number of Internet users spent a few > minutes and a few dollars in postage each week, maybe companies > providing Spamford with his business would think twice if they got > 25,000 letters that all effectively said "it has come to my attention > that your company uses spamming as a marketing tool. For this reason, > I have added your company to my list of "never buy from" companies." > Or, something to that extent. This would be an excellent idea if the Spamford's customers were reputable outfits. But they aren't. The spam consists of frauds, pyramid schemes, and sex sites. Any form of consumer boycott won't work with these spammers since they don't care how many people they annoy. Since the cost of spamming is low, the spammers need only a very miniscule return to profit. It's not going to stop until the cost of spamming oustrips the return. ------------------------------ From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin) Subject: Re: Spamford Leaving Won't Solve the Problem Organization: Revealed on a need-to-know basis Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 13:23:02 GMT In article , Jim Youll wrote: >> Seems to me that to cure the problem, we need to get across to the >> people spending money to have their ads spammed across the net, the >> idea that it's not a good PR move. > Companies that understand anything about PR and marketing do not do > this. At the worst, they do it a couple of times and realize they really > blew it. And companies that haven't even tried it yet (real companies > with real products and real customers) are learning from the mistakes of > the first misguided pioneers, and will not be included to follow > blindly. I hope you're right, but the early indications aren't good. Barnes & Noble and amazon.com are "real" companies and engage in spamming. And over the weekend, I got spam from Bell South. Grrrrrrrr. From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I _,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to _|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under \ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer ***~~~~----------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 22:01:56 -0400 From: Jeremy Radlow Subject: Re: Spamford Leaving Won't Solve the Problem Robb Topolski wrote: > I don't know about you but I'm not getting SPAM from Ford, Intel, or > Avon. I'm getting SPAM from RGG at Box 14A in Anytown USA. RGG > doesn't care about PR. He's happy with the 0.5% of return on 14 > million basically free e-mail ads. But now that nobody in the US will host spamhouses, maybe solutions that were rejected out of hand a year ago can be utilized today. I remember hearing about a plan by ISP's to filter out spam at the source -- mail has to go to TCP port 25, so you can easily prevent your customers from connecting to any SMTP server except your own, and then throttle traffic passing through your SMTP server. I really doubt that a typical user needs to send more than 1,000 mail messages per day, so restricting users to that level of traffic wouldn't get in the way of non-spammers, but would stop spammers before they could get started. 0.5% of 1,000 (and I bet the response rate isn't anywhere near that high) is pretty insignificant. This idea seemed impractical a year ago, because there was no lack of places for Joe Spammer to go if he got kicked off one ISP. With ISP's consolidating, and spam factories being kicked off the net, asking ISP's to keep their users in check seems a lot more reasonable now. Jeremy Radlow radlow@acm.org ------------------------------ From: Bill_Walker@qualcomm.com (Bill Walker) Subject: Re: Spamford Rides Again! Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 14:09:18 -0700 Organization: QUALCOMM, Inc. In article , Richard M. Sander wrote: > Here's the text of a fax we received today from Spamford > Looks like he's pulling out all the stops > --- text of fax follows --- > GOOD TODAY ONLY! [note: we received it at 4:00pm EDT] > CYBER PROMOTIONS HALF PRICE ** BLOW OUT** SALE! > (proceeds will go towards Cyber Promotions' high profile lawsuit > against AGIS who single handedly injured thousands of small business > people by disconnecting their lifeline with no prior notice!) Did you have a business relationship with Spamford? If not, then he just sent you junk fax, and you can take him to court on it under 47 USC Sec. 227. Gee, if every one of these solicitations for money to help fund his lawsuit ended up _costing_ him $500 (plus legal fees), I wonder where that'd leave his suit? Bill Walker, QUALCOMM, Inc., San Diego, CA USA Bill_Walker@qualcomm.com Support the anti-spam amendment. Join at ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #265 ******************************