We have been fighting spam religiously for many years.

Preventing spam is a complex process involving subscriber's views and our available tools.

Some subscribers receive tons of it, others receive none. Some want to receive unsolicited mail, others don't want any.

To date, we have only been able to react to spam attacks after the fact. Even our latest Sendmail upgrade offers few

Now we believe we've found a solution!

This month we will be implementing a program that promises to identify spam and enable us to put a “spam identifier” in the subject line of each spam message.

How will that help? Those that receive spam and don't want it will be able to put our “spam identifier” into their email program's filter. We will show you how to do that next month...

We are scheduling a brief downtime for our terminal server in Salem to swap out some modem cards.

This downtime will only affect access capability for those

dialing into Salem and will only last about five minutes.

The downtime will occur sometime during the second weekend of December

(December 8 and 9).

Again, this will only affect subscribers who dial into Salem. Cape Ann subscribers will not be affected by this scheduled downtime.

It is no secret that Microsoft has plenty of security problems with their software. This month there are two serious alerts.

We have just seen email that tries to start Windows Media

Player. There is a recent security alert about the Media Player that may compromise your system and we recommend you install their patch. Please do a search for “Microsoft Security Bulletin MS01-056” for additional

information.

There is also a security problem with all versions of Internet Explorer, there is no patch available yet. This security fault may enable a malicious web site to attack

your computer via downloaded files.

Please be careful where you browse. We will alert you when a patch is available.

It was another quiet month at the help desk.

Again, most calls were for account setup information.

Our new support team now handles all tech support issues.

If you need help, please ask

for tech support if you call our main office numbers. This will help the answering service properly route your call.

Remember, the tech support team is available 24 hours a day and the direct, toll free number is
877-221-2116.

This was a quiet month on the network as well. None of our upstream providers had any incidents to report.

Work continues on a number of java-based control panels for our customers.

Subscribers who host their

domains with us will soon be able to manage their own email accounts, including autoresponders for when they are away from town.

We just received our most powerful server to date. More information on this will be available next month.

Are you pleased with our service? Do you know someone who is unhappy with their current Internet or On-line service?

Why not do them and yourself a favor?

Just recommend our service. If they subscribe, we'll give you a free month of access!

They will appreciate your advice and you'll save a little money.

Again this month, over a dozen subscribers are getting their access in December for free - just by referring new subscribers.

Everybody wins!