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Aggressive Email Filtering Blocks Political Debate

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the been-there-done-that dept.

Stephen writes "Many of us have spam blockers operating on our mail. But according to this BBC article, when British members of parliament starting having their emails filtered last month, it stopped them talking about genuine political business such as the Sexual Offences Bill, and prevented them receiving some constituents' emails." This problem has bit me on the bum a few times too. About 1 message in every 250 spam is a false hit. Course thats about once a day :(

3 of 392 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Work around by Cy+Guy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    create a text file [&] zip it

    Unless the recipient is expecting this they should just delete the message. I routinely delete any email that has zipped attachments unless I have previously agreed with the sender to send it that way. (That's assuming the recipients mailserver doesn't routinely strip zip files off as an enterprise virus protection measure in the first place.)

    But one way your suggestion could be modified that will work for anyone whose email can view HTML is to print your message to graphic file, convert it to a GIF and embed it into a simple a webpage.

    The reader will open the file and see what looks like a text message, but it actually will be the GIF image of your message.

    Most filters don't block HTML and GIF files.

    --
    Work for Change & GET PAID!
  2. true story by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Interesting

    i got in a fight with an ex-girlfriend and we ceased speaking for awhile

    i became further incensed because she never contacted me after the fight

    we didn't talk for 2 months

    finally, i contacted her and said "why didn't you get back to me??!!"

    she said, "you didn't get my email?"

    i looked, and there it was, 2 months back, in my spam folder (yes, i keep all of my spam, the folder is gigantic)

    although you could make a joke about emails from girlfriends being called spam, in this particular case, considering the chance at reconciliation that was lost and the feelings involved, it was definitely not funny at all ;-(

    so i can say, with certainty, that my personal life has been greatly and adversely affected by spam.

    you can hate spam for all sorts of reasons, but for me, it's personal.

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  3. Re:False Positive by lessthan0 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A better solution (the one I use) includes a summary report of spam filtered each day. The report lists the number of spams from each sender and I can usually spot valid mail in the list of "From"s without having to look at a single message.

    If I spot a false positive, then I dig into my spam archive for that day and check it out.

    I use the spastic filter:
    http://spastic.sourceforge.net