[ALUG] email bouncing ? |webmail how good?

[MJ Ray]

James Freer <jessejazza at yahoo.co.uk> wrote: [...]
> I wondered if this was one of those cases where a logger (think that's 
> what they're called) gets onto the computer or website where 
> greyhoundhomer.org is located and then sends spam using that address, 
> and hence why aol.com picks it up. You have said that aol.com spam 
> control is poor... but is it any different to yahoo or gmail.

It could be a "joe job" which is what I think you're describing, but
it seemed more like AOL disliked the server rather than the domain. If
greyhoundhomer.org is on a typical hosting server and its owner isn't
sharp at keeping spammer signup attempts tied down, then that could be
the problem.

AOL are very poor at spam, but in a way different to yahoo or gmail.
AOL send misleading error messages and hard-to-reach postmasters.
Yahoo do anti-social things to mailservers they don't "like".
Googlemail do a bit of both, but less aggressively AFAICT.

I've not heard of problems with the British Gmail (not Google's).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4354954.stm

> When i had an email with my isp, BT back in 2002 i had such a problem 

Much of BT's email is now through Yahoo, so just as unreliable.

> AOL, yahoo and gmail seem fairly good for controlling spam and viruses 
> from what i can gather.

Excuse my surprise, but where did you gather that and how much are
AOL, yahoo and gmail paying them?

[...]
> As i'm getting round to setting up a home server for a website should i 
> consider imap - but the problem there is one's server has always got to 
> be running?

If you host the IMAP yourself, yes.  If you have the IMAP at your
hosting provider, then it has some advantages:

- only download email when you choose - delete spam without
downloading most of it;

- offline/disconnected working and synchronisation is possible;

and one big disadvantage:

- less widely supported and tested than POP or SMTP.

> Sorry i'm not as computer literate as i should be but i'm 
> slowly learning about all these things.

Aren't we all?
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MJ Ray http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html tel:+44-844-4437-237 -
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