Spam is more than just annoying, it costs Internet users and Internet-based businesses hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Spam is "postage due" marketing; it's like a telemarketer calling you collect.

The economics of junk e-mail encourages massive abuse and because spammers can get into the business very cheaply, the volume of spam is increasing every day.

One ISP has tracked the amount of spam sent to a

Our statistics can be found at mrtg.cove.com/mrtg/MailCheck/, where it can be seen that sometimes up to 90% of all incoming mail is spam!

It's no wonder ISPs and corporate networks are at war with spammers.

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The CoveCam was one of the first online cameras in Massachusetts. It was active more than a year before the Friendship arrived. The technology we used back then was primitive by today's standards;

just a digital camera showing a “snapshot” when someone accessed the page.

We recently upgraded the CoveCam to fully digital, Java-based streaming video,

which makes the view much more realistic.

Now you can actually see seagulls fly by!

Last month we experienced two instances (Jan 9 and 27) where the volume of spam was so great that we had to delay spam and virus filtering just to keep all the mail coming

into our network without having to reject any. This caused delays in delivering email to everyone's inboxes.

To prevent delays in the future

caused by "spam storms," we are installing several more mail servers. Thanks to spammers, we project our costs for anti-spam/anti-virus protection will be around $15,000-$20,000

in 2003.

As a result of this "spam crisis," we will now have more mail servers than web servers!

It was a quiet month at the help desk.

Most calls were for account setup information.

If you ever need help, please select tech support if you call our main office numbers. This will enable you to get our

access numbers, email settings or talk with someone at our help desk.

Please remember, our help desk team is available to you 24 hours a day and the direct, toll free number is
877-221-2116.

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

We are completing the upgrades to several servers, building several new firewalls/subnet routers and

installing several new mail servers.

Our next project involves upgrading our SpamCheck program; making it more resistant to high volume surges and speeding up reverse DNS lookups.

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 February for free - just by referring new subscribers.

Everybody wins!