HiWAAY: Internet Services

According to one FAQ: "The prevailing theory is that it is from the song in Monty Python's famous spam-loving Vikings sketch that goes, roughly, 'Spam spam spam spam, spam spam spam spam, spam spam spam spam...' The Vikings would sing this over and over, rising in volume until it was impossible for the other characters in the sketch to converse (which was, of course, a large part of the joke.)" In a similar way, the rising volume of unsolicited messages is making it annoying and sometimes impossible to communicate via the Internet.

Unlike most forms of message transmission, where most of the cost is borne by the sender, on the Internet most of the cost of message transmission is borne by the receiver. Thus, the millions of people on the Internet can be sent various promotional or advertising messages at very little cost to the sender, but at enormous costs to the recipients. The volume of spam has reached a point where it is no longer a matter of the individual spending a few extra moments of time to delete the occasional junk message or overlook the occasional off topic news article. Spam is having serious detrimental effect upon the total resources of the Internet. The very low cost to the sender of spam also has the side effect of producing little incentive to target the audience with the result that spam is reaching children unable to deal with it.

HiWAAY's first line of defense against spam relies on the anti-spam provisions of our Sendmail email gateway, the most widely used SMTP software on the Internet.

As yet an additional layer of defense of spam, HiWAAY offers a powerful opt-out/in spam block option for your HiWAAY email account. This anti-spam option, AnteSpam, automatically sidelines spam mail before it reaches your HiWAAY mailbox. Annoying and offensive spam messages are retained in a special spam mailbox for your review. AnteSpam uses message content based software rules that are constantly updated around-the-clock. You benefit from custom rules always updated to catch the latest spam. You may login to your HiWAAY AnteSpam account at: https://www.antespam.com

No. They do not in any way affect web browsing. Our SMTP gateway filter ONLY affects inbound email addressed to HiWAAY subscribers.

No. We do not operate any form of firewall. HiWAAY does not maintain any filters on TCP/IP protocols in our router other than the widespread and long standing ones that the Internet community generally recognize as prudent to protect the reliability of our systems.

No. It only affects the services to our individual subscribers whose emailboxes are hosted on HiWAAY's own email server. Our corporate dedicated customers can purchase AnteSpam for their domains.

The HiWAAY email gateway rejects messages with different errors depending upon the reason the message failed to pass through the HiWAAY sendmail filters. Where the senders address can be determined (highly unlikely if the message was spam), the sender will get an automatic return message, known as a 'bounce' notice from their gateway which will indicate their message failed to deliver to HiWAAY. In most cases the bounce notice tells the sender what to do to correct the reason the message was rejected. Depending upon the type of error, sometimes their gateway will keep trying to resend the message.

We think filtering of spam is a limited 'first aid' response to a problem that is better solved with other long term measures. The need for filtering will decrease as the general population learns that spam is an ineffective marketing tool which more often backfires, better technology becomes available to place the burden of costs on the source of spam, and laws are enacted to hold the spammers accountable. Unfortunately the better solutions take time, and the problems of spam are very immediate. HiWAAY will change our ANTI-SPAM policies the moment the majority of our subscribers tell us we should. Until then, filtering is a bad idea whose time, unfortunately, has come.

As mentioned previously, some of the spam slips through our filter. If technology can't build a coffee filter that does not let a few grounds into the coffee, how can we build a perfect email spam filter? We observe that much of the spam that slips through our filters is originated very determined individuals who go to great effort to circumvent automated filters.

IMPORTANT: We can analyze messages that were incorrectly identified as legitimate mail (just send them with full headers to junk@hiwaay.net, DO NOT SEND THEM TO abuse@hiwaay.net, instead please send them to junk@hiwaay.net) and we can modify our block rules to recognize future such messages as spam.

Messages suspected of being spam are not deleted, so if a piece of legitimate email is miscategorized, you can still read it using the AnteSpam web interface. If AnteSpam does miscategorize legitimate email, you cam return the message to your mailbox and and add it to your pass list so any further email from that sender won't get blocked again. We analyze messages that were incorrectly categorized as spam and can modify our block rules to avoid future miscategorizations.

If you wish, you can turn off spam filtering on your mailbox by visiting https://www.antespam.com

We don't consider our spam filtering to be censorship in the sense that we are denying individuals the ability to express their opinions because we found them objectionable. There are those who detest even the hint of such actions as abridging the rights of the people who originate the spam. But the rights of our subscribers are also being abridged by the overwhelming amount of spam and we find ourselves being forced to balance these rights in favor of our paying subscribers. As always, HiWAAY recognizes our subscribers have a choice among many companies for their Internet services. Our anti-spam policy has created more choices, not fewer.

First, you can recommend HiWAAY for their anti-spam policies. We know these policies are deeply offensive to some, and expect we will lose their business. We can only hope these losses will be offset by others who will select HiWAAY as their ISP as a result of our policies. Your recommendation, if you find our anti-spam policy agreeable, will help support HiWAAY.

Second, while we can't complain on your behalf, the efforts of individuals can have significant impact upon reducing spam. If you find particular spam messages objectionable, we invite you to complain directly to those responsible.