Robbie commented:

>[ So why is MMDigest declared to be spam?

I have had a similar situation a couple of times with my Internet
service provider bouncing messages from friends.  Apparently some
ISPs subscribe to a blacklist service.  All it would take would be
for someone who has decided he doesn't want to receive MMD to put
it into a filter in his machine and then, perhaps accidentally,
upload his list of unwanted ISPs to the blacklist server.

I contacted Uniserve and here's what they said.

"What happened with Istar was that we started using the ORBS list
( www.orbs.org ) which blocks e-mail from servers that are open for
spammers until they are cleaned up. Istar is one of these companies on
this list.  They do know this and have yet to have themselves taken off
of this list.  At this time we are not using the ORBS list but might
start using it again in the near future. Hopefully by then Istar will
have themselves off of the ORBS list."

Substitute Foxtail for Istar and maybe that's what happened?

Jim Heyworth,
Sechelt, B.C., Canada

 [ I am interested in tracking down which of the "black hole" lists
 [ the Foxtail computer is listed on.  I'm aware that one black hole
 [ list blacklisted the entire network of Level 3, including my Tier
 [ 2 service provider which bought service from them and was, until
 [ recently, in their IP address range.  My Tier 2 provider has a very
 [ strict anti-spam policy (though I don't know how strictly it is
 [ enforced; I would expect them to cut off anyone promptly that had
 [ a complaint lodged against them).
 [
 [ I have recently installed [on my private email account] "Active Spam
 [ Killer", a program that sends an automated message to every incoming
 [ piece of mail asking for confirmation by a human: just hit 'r' and
 [ the replied-to mail, which has a magic number in the subject,
 [ authorizes delivery of the first piece of mail.
 [
 [ This mechanism has cut down my spam almost to zero.  (Would you
 [ believe that 3 or 4 pieces a week get "acknowledged" from humans(?)
 [ at the spam sites!)  At any rate, _many_ of those automated messages
 [ end up generating bounce messages since the origins are forged.
 [
 [ I am suspicious that this flurry of outbound automated responses
 [ from my machine may, itself, have gotten me on some blacklists,
 [ as a portion of the content of the original message is sent to the
 [ apparent sender of the original message.  Since those addresses are
 [ often forged, if they land on a real user, they might complain and
 [ blame me.  It's a mistake, but....
 [
 [ So, let's keep track of this.  Send me more info if you get any.
 [
 [ Meanwhile, I'm temporarily pruning most of the e-mail addresses
 [ out of the MMD web site for now.   I think that we're going to have
 [ to formulate a privacy policy (which is essentially that your
 [ participation in an on-line discussion forum isn't private) and that
 [ we'll continue to make modest attempts to thwart address harvesting
 [ but we can't prevent it.
 [
 [ -- Jody