Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2003 08:33:10 -0400
From:
Dave,
This weekend I accidentally discovered that I was not receiving some
emails sent to my MIT alumni email address. I went to the university's
website and found no mention of a problem in the alumni email area and
so I sent an email reporting the problem. Below is the message I got
back.
What disturbs me most about this situation is that they clearly know
there is a problem and yet they make no effort to proactively
communicate. Most people who this impacts probably don't even know they
are missing mail.
Also, I wonder how many other forwarding systems/accounts across the
globe are experiencing the same problems as a result of the viruses,
worms and spam and are not informing their customers.
I realize this is a bit of catch 22. If they let people know there's a
problem then they will be inundated with inquiries and worried alumni;
meanwhile if someone discovers a problem, they lose confidence in the
system and stop using the account completely. I'm sure MIT's counting on
this not being publicized and so only a handful of folks like me
discovering the problem and shunning the service.
btw, EFL in the message below, stands for email forwarding for life.
-----Original Message-----
From: ansinfo@xxxxxxx [mailto:ansinfo@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, September 08, 2003
Subject: problems with EFL
Thank you for your email. The recent EFL problems have had a number of
causes. The well-documented viruses and spam have caused many problems
across the Internet and it seems that many ISPs (internet service
providers) have increased the sensitivity of their spam filters and
slowed down the rate in which they accept email.
The specific problem we have been seeing is due to the slow rate in
which some ISPs accept our forwarded email. We have seen instances
where an ISP accepts email from us at a rate of 1 piece per minute. And
sometimes those emails are not accepted by the ISP, even after a full
minute passes. We assume that the transfer failed and then returned the
email to the end of the queue on our end to be resent later. This is
causing huge delays in email delivery.
MIT's network managers are attempting to work with major ISPs to resolve
the problems.
Please understand that we are doing the best we can to resolve the
situation as quickly as possible.
I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you.
Sincerely,
Katonio Butler
MIT Infinite Connection
Web Technical Services
help@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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