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Plusnet are most definitely doing something about the current spam problems:
http://community.plus.net/comms/2007/11/12/wanted-postini-anti-spam-trialists/

You say that at work your mail servers are rejecting 800,000 emails a day. Plusnet have signed up with Postini who are rejecting 50-70% of emails offered for the people who have signed up for the trials - but Plusnet have the settings at the lowest, least aggressive level.. But there are some users who are moaning because they don't like the idea of Plusnet rejecting any of their mail - they think they want all mail addressed to them to be delivered (silly fools!). Whatever they do Plusnet can't please everybody.

The results I'm seeing from the trial are very, very encouraging - the volume of spam getting through has dropped dramatically - although the tagging of what does get through seems to be going in the wrong direction at the moment - but that is nothing to do with Postini as it is still done by DSPAM (that will probably change in the new year).

If you haven't signed up for the trials I suggest you give it a go.

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There shouldn't have been any spam getting through to my F9 mail account, because I hardly ever use it. Last month I had 10 legitimate emails to my F9 account, and that's quite a lot for me. 5 of them were from a friend, the other 5 were from two subscription lists. I had a lot more than 5 spam mails though, and I can categorically state that it occurred after Plusnet exposed all our email addresses to the world. Prior to that I had NO unsolicited mail to my F9 account. None whatsoever. At all.

Do we know for certain if any completely new PN users are getting spam to their mail account from Day1? I doubt it. I also doubt you would get any spam if you use your account carefully. Which I did. OK, I know about address-harvesting trojans that scan your drive for any idx or doc files with an "@" symbol in them, I'm not stupid. But I managed almost 3 years with no spam until now when I suddenly get loads. And it's not anything I've done, because it's obvious other PN users are getting the same.

Does anyone know if PN will change a username for a new one?

I thought a username change or a free .uk domain was offered to all at the time of the problems,but I may be mistaken.

We do all share your feelings about the Webmail incident. Spam would undoubtedly be less of an issue for our customers were it not for that, even if it was already a pretty big problem before then. We did offer to change people's email addresses or usernames and we also offered a free domain name to replace your old email address, as well as some new admin tools aimed at reducing the impact. If you drop me a PM, I'd be happy to discuss the best answer for your account. You can see more about our follow-up activities to that here.

Our attitude certainly isn't that spam is something we are not responsible for solving, or that the problem can't be solved. Whether a spam attack resulted from the Webmail incident or another source such as someone with you in their address book getting a trojan, it's no less problematic. That's why we are putting the efforts we are into deploying the best possible solution to spam available to us. Like John, I'm pretty hopeful about Postini, and once we've got the integration done so customers can control this properly I think it will be very effective answer indeed.

Ian

In reply to:

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We do all share your feelings about the Webmail incident. Spam would undoubtedly be less of an issue for our customers were it not for that, even if it was already a pretty big problem before then. We did offer to change people's email addresses or usernames and we also offered a free domain name to replace your old email address, as well as some new admin tools aimed at reducing the impact. If you drop me a PM, I'd be happy to discuss the best answer for your account. You can see more about our follow-up activities to that here.

Our attitude certainly isn't that spam is something we are not responsible for solving, or that the problem can't be solved. Whether a spam attack resulted from the Webmail incident or another source such as someone with you in their address book getting a trojan, it's no less problematic. That's why we are putting the efforts we are into deploying the best possible solution to spam available to us. Like John, I'm pretty hopeful about Postini, and once we've got the integration done so customers can control this properly I think it will be very effective answer indeed.

Ian

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I wasn't aware of the offer to change username. Thankyou for the info. I shall certainly PM you.