Changes at Pacific Internet

Pacific Internet has been working hard to reduce spam and protect you from viruses. Although some things can be done on the server (our side) to reduce the amount of spam and viruses that you receive, there are things you can do on your own computer to control spam and other annoyances. Click here for links to software that will help control spam, viruses, popups, and other annoyances.

Got {spam}?

Spam is the largest problem to ever face the Internet. Pacific Internet now has another line of defense against SPAM, and it is substantially impacting the amount of spam our users are receiving. In addition, you may notice that some email comes through (99% of the time it is spam) that is tagged with a "{SPAM}" in the subject line. This indicates that the system found this email to be likely spam. You can use your local email client software to filter these messages to the trash or to a spam folder.

Instructions for filters are included at the links below for various operating systems and email clients.

Windows | Mac

A word about Viruses:

Pacific Internet recommends that all users install and update antivirus software on their computers. Modern computers are more susceptible than ever to viruses. There are many fewer viruses for Macs than PC's, however antivirus software is also recommended for Macs. The most prevalent antivirus programs for the Mac are Norton Antivirus and McAfee Virex. A recent newcomer to the market is VirusBarrier from Intego. For PCs, the favorites are Norton Antivirus and Mcafee Antivirus.

Here is a bit more detail on how the spam filter works:

Mailfilter scans all incoming mail, even that which you may have requested to be delivered from your Postini Message Center.

Mailfilter looks at the recipient, the sender, the subject and the body of the email and assigns a numerical score for each suspicious element of an email. The overall score is what mailfilter uses to determine whether a message is possibly or most probably spam. If you are interested, the scoring used can be found here.

If the message scores high enough the mail simply will not arrive. This may sound drastic to you but after hundreds of complaints from users we have concluded that most people simply don't want to see this type of mail at all. You may opt-out completely from this level of filtering. You may request that your address be excluded completely at any time by emailing support@pacific.net.

If the message is suspicious but does not score high enough, the message will be allowed through to your mailbox but it will be designated as {spam} in the subject line.

Why the designation?

Because there is no individual message center where you can view quarantined mail, you cannot retrieve mail that has been blocked completely. That is the reason the suspicious mail is tagged as possible spam. It not only alerts you to the fact it might be junkmail, it also allows you to decide for yourself. One person's spam is another person's opportunity and a machine cannot know this for certain so anything questionable is tagged and delivered.

The mailfilter is set to err on the side of caution and therefore some mail that is probably spam is going to come through anyway. There is no way to make this perfect and you should not expect it.

However, many users will find that this is an easy way to filter suspicious mail in their own mail program. Using the 'spam' keyword for the subject line makes it simple to tell your mail program to put such mail in a separate folder or the Trash or Deleted items folder automatically. It also allows you to sort your mail so that you can look through the {spam} mail after viewing the rest of your new messages which will often save time. And lastly, it leaves the decision to you rather than automatically preventing you from seeing it at all.

When you reply to an email with {spam} in the subject, it will be included. This can be deleted manually if it is objectionable.

If a virus is found in an incoming email addressed to you, you may also receive a notice about an attachment or virus that was removed from your email before it got to you. In these cases, our network wide virus scanner has determined that the original attachment was 'unsafe' for some reason. This usually means that the file was determined to be a virus, but sometimes it can cause legitimate attachments to be removed IF they exhibit the same traits as a virus. Therefore, it's important to follow some simple rules when sending file attachments.
· Zip(compress) files when they contain executables using winzip <http://www.winzip.com> or some other file compression system.
· Don't send files with multiple file extensions like myfile.com.doc or myfile.exe.zip
· Files that will be removed because of 'unsafe' file type include:
· .reg
· .bat
· .csr
· .chm
These are considered dangerous file types because they can easily contain code that can instantly infect a computer and cause that computer to spread a virus quickly. There are a few other less common file types not listed here that are also blocked by the virus scanning software.

As always, we thank you for your continued patronage and we are interested in your feedback as to how we may make your service better. Please feel free to email comments@pacific.net.