Aggressive spam filtering that generates false positives on legitimate messages is an unfortunate fact of like these days. But as one Verio customer argues, shouldn't the decision on whether to use it be up to the customer and not his web hosting service?
"I've been a loyal Verio hosting customer for quite a few years -- I have two domains that I manage with them and I have three other customers with domains hosted with them," the reader wrote. "My gripe is that in the last couple of weeks, Verio has instituted a 'spam-blocking' service that cannot really be disabled. My problem is not so much them starting the spam blocking service as their particular implementation. I as a Verio-hosted user can 'Disable Spam Filtering' on my domain, but that choice doesn't really disable the filtering, it just lowers the threshold of what is determined to be spam. This change in itself is bad enough, but what is worse is that Verio's 'proprietary' spam blocking service bounces all messages that it determines to be spam without notifying me. I'm not able to authorize the individual to e-mail me, and neither is the individual able to authenticate themselves to let their e-mail come through."
The reader has found that, when Verio blocks a message to him, the sender receives only a generic bounce notice that doesn't even make it clear which message was blocked or why. "In fact, the bounce message doesn't even tell the sender why it was bounced or even that it was bounced because it looked like spam," the reader wrote. "I have had a number of order confirmations that were blocked as spam by Verio and neither the vendor nor I can do anything to force the message through. The sales rep of one company I'd placed five orders with tried to e-mail me order summaries as he usually does, but one of the five order summaries was rejected. Since the sales rep did not know which one was the rejected one, he assumed that all of them had been rejected and again sent the five summaries -- and again only four order summaries made it to me. It also appears that all e-mail communications from IBM.com is considered spam by Verio's proprietary service, as I've only been able to confirm my orders with them via IBM's website."
So far the reader's complaints to Verio have only netted the suggestion he upgrade to a more expensive Verio service. "Verio admits that the service is not quite perfect but refuses to allow me to decide what should or should not come into my domain," the reader wrote. "For some reason, Verio representatives seem to think that this is OK, because they have to protect their servers. In fact, three consecutive Verio reps told me that I could either wait until it gets better, or I could 'upgrade' to the VPS service, which happens to cost 600 percent more per month per domain. They refuse to admit that neither is acceptable. To say that I am looking for another hosting provider is like saying a guy stuck in the desert for weeks is looking for a little water."
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