Aggressive spam filtering still in effect

Spam is more under control these days than ever before, thanks to SpamAssassin, but there is still plenty of junk showing up in my mailbox. Thus I still routinely treat email from certain domains as spam without reading it.

The bad domains

The filter I'm using doesn't allow anything from the following domains to get to my inbox, unless I have added a specific address to my filter's "A-list":

   yahoo.com
   aol.com
   hotmail.com
   msn.com
   altavista.com
   earthlink.net

Note that right now,

   gmail.com

is not treated as a bad domain. (This should not be construed as an endorsement of gmail ... au contraire! Just a recognition that I don't get any spam from them.)

There are other domains not included above, but these are the main offenders. Mail sent from these domains isn't deleted, but instead is written to a separate file for later deletion. I'll scan through the file occasionally to make sure that no one got put there by mistake, but I don't look there very much (that's the whole point of the filtering).

If you use an account from the bad domains ...

If you want to send me email, and you want to use an address from one of the above domains, then there are a few options:

• If you are a current student, let me know in class and I'll add your address to the A-list. Better still, use your student account (it comes from umass.edu, and won't be filtered)
• If you are a colleague, then chances are you aren't using an account from a domain the above list, so it shouldn't be a problem. Otherwise I can add you to the A-list.
• If you are a former student, then your best bet is to use your student account if it still exists. Another possibility is to phone, write, or fax me with your email address, which will be added to the A-list.
• If you're a friend or family member, chances are you're already in the A-list. But if you're a friend tracking me down after a long time, and you want to send email, this could be a problem. Perhaps the best thing is to get my office phone and leave a message. I want to hear from you, but I can't deal with the spam!

Finally, my address isn't nobody@nowhere.com. That's an awesome address, but it's not mine. My real address appears at the bottom of this page in a crudely disguised form.