PCI Broadband

Your Hometown Internet Service Provider
5770 Flintridge Dr. Suite 100 Colorado Springs, CO 80918

• SPAM filtering web interface This is where you turn on the general spam filter and fine tune what gets blocked/allowed.
• Redeliver my blocked email Use your UCE email report to retrieve blocked email.
• Forward my email to another email address Send your PCI email to any other email address.
• Put a temporary vacation message on my email box Use this when you'll be out of the office.
• Reveal the Full headers on an email We need the full headers on a SPAM complaint.

UCE and it's cousin Unsolicited Commercial USENET (UCU), are major problems on the Internet today. UCU has all but made the USENET (also knows as Net News and Newsgroups) unreadable, and together with UCE, threatens to make unusable those services which people use the most. UCU and UCE also 'hijack' unwilling Internet Service Providers along the way, moving massive amounts of unwanted data and clogging the 'pipelines' of the Internet.

PCI Systems, Inc. has an aggressive mail policy to protects its clients and mail hosts from Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (UCE) and Unsolicited Bulk E-mail (UBE), also commonly known as 'spam'. Because each customer may 'opt-in' to the general email filtering, we can implement strict filters so as to block as much SPAM as possible.

PCI considers SPAM/UCE to be an attack on our email servers. As such, we reserve the right to not accept email from certain types of senders. This type of blocking will occur regardless of individual customer 'opt-in' selections. Email blocked this way will not be summarized on any list since we simply do not accept email from these sources. The types of senders we block this way are described later on this page.

This is a guide to PCI Systems responses to the problem.

What Internet Users Should Do:

Just delete Unsolicited messages. That's the best way to deal with them.

When posting messages to the USENET, change your e-mail address in your news reader to read something like youruserid@removeme.yourmail.host (e.g. you@removethis.pcisys.net). This will help fool automated scanning software that many bulk e-mailers use to glean addresses from newsgroups. People who genuinely want to respond to you will see your mail address has been modified and will remove the added information.

Never, ever, ever, ever, ever reply to an Unsolicited message! We mean never. Many bulk e-mail operations will tell you that they will remove you from their list if you ask them to. This is not true. Bulk e-mail operations want you to reply so that they know your address is a valid one!

Do not attempt to "spam a spammer". This will get you nowhere, since most bulk e-mailers use faked addresses or simply filter all incoming messages regardless of intent or content. All you will do is end up complaining to another innocent victim and create even more email load on PCI's email servers. In fact, you may put your Internet account in jeopardy - after all, you will be acting as a bulk e-mailer yourself. Don't add to the problem!

Report Unsolicited Commercial/Bulk E-mail to "uce@pcisys.net" with full email headers. Since most of the SPAM sent now has forged 'From:' and 'To:' addresses, don't bother sending email to the sender or the sender's ISP. We cannot determine where the email actually came from without the full headers. NOTE: We cannot accept SPAM complaints unless you are actually using PCI's General SPAM Filter.

PCI's Software Initiatives:

General Filtering
PCI Systems has highly sophisticated filters which can catch a great deal of the incoming mass e-mail. We use a filtering program called SpamAssassin that has proven very effective. PCI doesn't automatically filter your E-mail, however. You must "opt-in" using the personalized web interface for restricting E-mail. Once you have "opt'd in", you will receive a summary email each day that email destined for you was filtered. We send this report so you can check if a legitimate email was blocked. If one (or more) of the blocked emails is legitimate, you can request redelivery using the Filtered Email Redelivery web page.

User-specific Filtering
PCI Systems has provided a filter for each customer to restrict additional E-mail domains and/or individual E-mail addresses. We have implemented a personalized web interface for restricting E-mail.

High unknown email address senders
We routinely refuse to accept email from email senders that demonstrate an extremely high number of emails intended for users that don't exist as compared to email sent to users who do exist. Several times per day, PCI analyzes its email logs and adds the IP addresses of these senders to its lists. Email rejected from this feature will have a reply message like

210.219.182.104 Too many emails to unknown users 040103

Known Open Proxy Servers
We routinely refuse to accept email from email senders that are known to be infected with viruses or worms that allow them to be 'commandeered' by SPAMmers and used to send SPAM. In fact, much of the SPAM sent now comes from computers infected this way. PCI uses a real-time DNS-based IP lookup to determine if email senders are listed. The list is maintained by the Distributed Server Boycott List. Email rejected from this feature will have a reply message like

ACCESS DENIED to OPEN PROXY SERVER rdu57-40-150.nc.rr.com by dsbl.org DNSBL (http://dsbl.org/listing?ip=66.57.40.150)

Dynamic IP Addresses
We routinely refuse to accept email from email senders that are known to be dynamically assigned their IP addresses. This includes almost all dialup, cable, dsl, and wireless customers in the world. PCI believes that customers with a dynamic IP address should be using their ISPs email server and not attempting to send directly. PCI uses a real-time DNS-based IP lookup to determine if email senders are listed. The list is maintained by the Spam and Open Relay Blocking System. Email rejected from this feature will have a reply message like

ACCESS DENIED to DYNAMIC IP c-24-125-81-194.va.client2.attbi.com by sorbs.net DNSBL(http://www.dnsbl.au.sorbs.net/cgi-bin/lookup?IP=24.125.81.194)

IP Addresses which have sent SPAM to us
We routinely refuse to accept email from email senders that have sent a large amount of SPAM through our email servers. We summarize all the email filtered by our customers using the General SPAM Filter to determine what IP addresses have sent or relayed SPAM to us. We then analyze these IP addresses to determine if they are listed on various anti-spam lists, or if it appears the SPAM comes directly from them. Email rejected from this feature will have a reply message like

216.109.87 Too much SPAM 040102

IP Addresses which have sent viruses to us
We routinely refuse to accept email from email senders that have sent a large amount of virus through our email servers. We summarize all the email filtered by our customers using the General SPAM Filter to determine what IP addresses have sent or relayed viruses to us. Email rejected from this feature will have a reply message like

novarg 68.96.147.236 Virus 040130

Mail Relay Restrictions
PCI Systems has an extremely restrictive mail relaying policy. All of its customers are allowed to relay mail from within the PCI network, but no other host on the Internet can relay mail through a PCI Systems server. This means that PCI cannot be 'hijacked' into acting as a mail relay for UCE. Note that this policy does not restrict incoming mail to PCI Systems customers. Some PCI customers use IP addresses that are not part of PCI's direct network. Customers using National Dialing, iPass, or other Internet providers must use Relay Authentication to send mail through PCI's servers.

Faked Host Name Restrictions
It is commonplace for bulk e-mail companies to set their mail system to impersonate another Internet host when sending mail to prospects. PCI Systems' mail system checks the sender's Reverse ARPA Address against the global Domain Name Service. If the two don't match, the sending party is rejected. This also catches mail hosts that have been set up improperly and alerts the mail host operators.

Non-existent Domain Names
It is commonplace for bulk e-mail companies to set their mail system to use an email address for a domain that doesn't even exist. PCI Systems' mail system checks the sender's domain name to see if it is registered. If it isn't, the sending party is rejected. This also catches mail hosts that have been set up improperly and alerts the mail host operators.

Customer Response & Actioning
PCI Systems customers should report receipt of unsolicited E-mail to uce@pcisys.net and other Internet users can report mail abuse to abuse@pcisys.net. Please note that a PCI technician may not return your mail because of time constraints. Every message will be read by a PCI technician, and acted on if it is appropriate to do so. If you do not include the full email headers, we cannot take any action. Different email programs have different ways to display the full headers. Each complaint should be on a separate email with both the full headers and the original SPAM included.

Please note that PCI customers may receive email that, based on the "To:" field, appears to be addressed to someone else. It is not unusual for a SPAMmer to forge parts of the email. PCI will not deliver email to your emailbox that isn't addressed to you.

Internet Resources:

Articles & Documents