[FQuest Notice] Email Alert & Action Requested

[Deb]

Greetings,

FutureQuest is sending this message to alert you that ALL incoming email is now scanned for viruses and refused at the system level if a virus is detected. In addition to the virus scanning alert, FutureQuest wants to alert you to the fact that you may be relaying junk email, from your account to networks outside of FutureQuest, without even realizing it. This can result in a TOS Violation, Blacklisting, or worse. For this reason we ask that you take the time to read this message in its entirety to ensure you understand the change that FutureQuest has made as well as the changes you may need to make to prevent these types of situations.

Contents include:
* "The Problem"
* "Notice"
* "Action Requested"

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#### The Problem:
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The steadily increasing amount of junk and virus-laden email has caused other networks to see the FutureQuest Network and Clients as a "source" of these types of messages. This is because FutureQuest Site Owners who have autoresponders set up on email accounts, or who forward email to addresses outside of the FutureQuest Network, increase the chance of automatically responding to a forged email address (innocent party) or forwarding junk email to a network outside of FutureQuest.

Example:

1) Junk email is sent with a forged header to client's autoresponder or forwarded email address.

2) Client's autoresponder automatically responds with a copy of the junk email to the innocent party OR client's forwarding email address automatically forwards the junk email to their home ISP address or free email "spam catching" account.

3) The other network is alerted that junk email messages are coming from the FutureQuest Network.

4) FutureQuest is blacklisted because we host a client that is sending out junk email and/or viruses.

Some providers, including MSN and Hotmail, have already placed blacklists on FutureQuest because of situations like the ones described above. FutureQuest quickly resolved the issue with these providers. However, continued transmission of viruses and junk email can and will cause blacklisting to occur again by these, or any number of other providers, unless FutureQuest and its clients work jointly to resolve these issues to the best of our ability -- and quickly!

####################
##### NOTICE:
####################

The FutureQuest Terms of Service state, "Account Holder shall not use, nor recklessly or knowingly permit others to use, any part of the FutureQuest Network to send unsolicited messages of any kind, [or] ...to store or send any virus, worm, trojan horse or harmful code or attachment;" You may review the TOS at any time by pointing your browser to:
http://www.FutureQuest.net/Services/TOS/

Recently, FutureQuest has had to contact an increasing number of Site Owners for violating the FutureQuest Terms of Service, not because they were intentionally doing so but because they had their Catch-All account set to forward to an external address, or their autoresponders were replying to an immoderate amount of spam, which resulted in them sending junk and virus-laden email "from their account" to another service provider’s network.

To assist in the prevention of more violations, FutureQuest has begun scanning ALL incoming email for viruses. If a virus is detected, the email will be refused by the FutureQuest mail servers, without notice to the intended recipient, to prevent these viruses from affecting you, a valued FutureQuest Client, and to prevent these viruses from being inadvertently sent out from the FutureQuest Network to other networks.

There is a chance that some viruses not yet known by the filtering system could get through; there is also an extremely slight chance that a message could be incorrectly tagged as having a virus. However, after extensive monitoring, we feel confident that the risk of error is extremely slim while the benefits are enormous.

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#### Action Requested:
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If you currently have your catch-all email address, or any email account that receives an excessive amount of spam, set to forward to an external address, we do ask that you re-evaluate your need to do so and disable the forwarding of the account to prevent yourself and the FutureQuest Network from being seen as a “source of spam” by these external networks. For the same reason, we also ask that you disable any autoresponders on accounts that are primarily receiving spam. You can control the settings for your Catch-All account and your autoresponders by visiting the Email Manager section of your CNC.

Unfortunately, the System Wide Virus Filter is not able to prevent junk email messages that do not have a virus attached from entering the Network and being sent back out in the ways described above. As innocent as the FutureQuest Site Owners are, the consequences of these types of setups have become serious. FutureQuest hopes, and we are sure you will agree, that the implementation of network wide virus scanning will help a great deal. Your assistance in following the above recommendations should make an even greater impact!

We appreciate your anticipated support as well as the time taken to review your email settings to make any needed adjustments along the way.

Sincerely,

The Entire FutureQuest Team @ FutureQuest, Inc.

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The above message has been sent via email to all "Primary Contact Email Addresses" FutureQuest has on file for its clients. If you did not receive this message, and you are a primary contact, please let us know by sending an email to Service@FutureQuest.net. The coming months have much more exciting news in store so it's important that you receive our notices

[John Kennett]

For the same reason, we also ask that you disable any autoresponders on accounts that are primarily receiving spam.

Does this mean that we should not be bouncing emails identified as spam by SpamAssassin?

John

[Deb]

You bring up an excellent point that we failed to mention within the above email...and that may... at some point in the future need to be addressed aggressively

SpamAssassin's tagged messages should not be bounced at this stage in the game The problem is that so much of the spam comes in with forged headers that the bounced messages are being sent to innocent bystanders rather than back to the spammer

Deb
- It's a sad day when the innocent are judged guilty by default.

[MarkM]

ahhhh burst me bubble will ya!!
I've been getting a much smaller amount of spam and thought maybe the recent huricane had done some good to blow the spammers away from their offshore hangouts! No such luck ,huh

I'm all for what ever you need to do, FQ!!!

Will check oursettings

Mark

[rossH]

questions Deb

1) is FQ currently blacklisted anywhere?

2) and, can you not set Spam Assassin globally to blackhole all bounces?

it would save some work for those who don't hear this call anyway...

rooting for you

[Deb]

1) is FQ currently blacklisted anywhere?

The bigger question is "Who isn't blacklisted somewhere?". I am not currently aware of any viable blacklisting on FutureQuest but I could not swear that we are not blacklisted by someone somewhere. The anti-spam activists are fighting just as hard as the spammers. It's you and me that get caught in the crossfire...

2) and, can you not set Spam Assassin globally to blackhole all bounces?

FutureQuest has no desire to remove the ability to forward email, bounce email, or to prevent the use of autoresponders. This type of functionality has good and valid uses. It does appear like the spammers are trying to push us into such a situation but we're fighting it off as best we can.

Currently we are hoping that client awareness will resolve a "good enough chunk" of the problem with continued "Personal Attention" to those clients who missed the message but are sadly part of the problem to ensure they adjust accordingly. We hate the idea of a "blanket restriction" and are trying to avoid having to go that route. This, of course, does require as many clients as possible to stay alert and adjust where needed. It is absolutely a group effort.

Deb
- "I have come here to chew bubble gum and LART spammers... and I'm all out of bubble gum."

[Wild Rose]

Good Work FQ!

SO because Autoresponder can cause problems I want to change that But can't figure out how to change the settings on my shell account

[Deb]

SO because Autoresponder can cause problems I want to change that But can't figure out how to change the settings on my shell account

To edit or remove your autoresponder and/or to change the catch-all email account to no longer forward to outside addresses, visit the Email Manager within your account's CNC and click on the username of the email address being changed... e.g. click on "wildrose". There you will find the options to edit and delete etc.

To turn off your catch-all feature..if you would like. Visit the Email Manager and click on the [Catch-All Alias] link right above the wildrose username.

If you have any problems while in there just let us know...

Thank you for taking the time...and thanks to the others that have shown their support as well

Deb
- "May you live long, and spamless"

[phppete]

I've just changed my spam from bounce to delete so hopefully that will help in some small way. I didn't think about spam bouncing as a problem but with all the forged headers it is obvious but something you don't think about.

I have catch all on my accounts but they always go to the primary account email and not to any third party email.

You have my full support for any further steps you have to take, even if they do cause a little pain.

I hate to think how much time FQ has to spend on issues caused by spam, it must be all consuming and very draining.

Pete

[Tom]

Deb, what about redirecting (forwarding) Spam Assassin's found spam outside?

As a safety net, I've had SA send all of its suspected spam to a Yahoo account "just in case" because I do commonly find a false positive in there when I go clean it out. They appear to look like they're still from the sender and not me when I see them on Yahoo.

Tom