I received a lot of mails lately, some of them concerning my marketplace-product "Glacier-Girl". As much as I would like to answer all those mails, I am unable to do so: MAny of you seem to have subscribed a mail-protection-service called "MAPS". To bad: This mail-protection-service considers 2 of germanys largest internet-providers and 3 other german mail-providers to be "known-sources-of-spam". They even consider my privat server - which has only one mail-adress (my own) a "known-source-of-spam". When reading the reflected mails, I am always pointed to looking inside their "FAQ" for details as to how I have to configure my system. However, I can't find those FAQs on their pages. So, as much as I would like to answer those questions - I am unable to do so because of some hair-brained mail-protection-system. Did anyone have similar problems or did anyone find the FAQs on their page? I can't even contact this idiotic service, because they protected their own eMail-Accounts and all my help-requests are reflected... Joerg

Can you just get a Hotmail account and mail from there?

I could try. But I hate having to create lots of accounts because of some "anti-spam-service" that can't do it's job right.

I know the feeling Joerg - my ISP has blocked certain incoming emails becuase of improper formatting. Including the ebots from this site sigh I feel your pain

I battle SPAM for a living, I'll happily block first and ask questions later, mostly just individual addresses, and most with an explanation of how to get off the list. I block some domains, a few get an outright REJECT, but I've saved the ultimate sanction of DISCARD for the AOL mailer-daemon :) Now if only they'd let me block yahoo... later jb

I know... typicall sysadmin-method: block first, think... later... naw, why bother thinking, when you can block something? I'll happily take 2 spam-mails a day if I can communicate with people. Blocking those 2 spams at the expense of loosing my ability to communicate is like cutting of your right arm because people you do not like tend to shake your hand. The problem in this case is a well tended "nerdism" among sysadmins. One of my friends is a sysadmin and he also likes to block things. She dislikes AOL - whups... suddenly no one in her net could receive e-Mails from any AOL-source. She dislikes Web.de - whups... suddenly all the web.de mails disappeared. Well, now she developed a dislike for hotmail and gmx - whups... guess what mails are going to be blocked next? A typical case. She never bothers to think for a second, that almost 90% of the internet-users in Germany are actually using a GMX or Web.de-account. She just blocks what she dislikes... Same problem with MAPS: Simply block everything coming in until they can prove they aren't sending spam. The whole thing has a funny twist: Their own e-Mail-adresses are MAPS-protected as well - making it impossible to contact them to prove you aren't sending spam. Very intelligent... Block all you like. It just happens at the expense of communication. Right now, 3 members of Renderosity will probably consider me an arrogant bastard, because I failed to answer their messages... Wow... Man... I am so happy some triggerhappy sysadmin had the ability to block mails and instantly put it to good use. Joerg