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How we discovered Verizon’s Spamdetector could be twisted
into a disguise for censorship!
Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth
Gould
Boiling
Frogs Post
Friday, Nov 20th, 2009
A kind of “No Fly” list for emails
We had just emailed the link to our interview discussing the
‘real’ history of Afghanistan on Sibel Edmond’s
boilingfrogspost. As soon as it was emailed a Verizon response
spit back immediately with a notice declaring the email we had
just sent was spam. When the culprit turned out to be our friend
Sibel’s website we called Verizon to clear up the problem.
This was clearly not spam and should be easily reinstated, we
thought. While a very chatty employee attempted and failed to
fix our problem, we innocently asked how can we get this address
back in business. That is when the real fun began. According
to the laws of Verizon Central, once you’ve been labeled
spam, there is only one course of action and it goes like this:
1. Verizon uses an unnamed third party who decides what is
spam.
2. This unnamed third party also reviews complaints like ours.
3. We were told to send the “offending” email to
spamdetector.update@verizon.net.
4. The unnamed third party would make a secret decision within
24 hours.
5. If the unnamed third party decides it is spam, regardless
of our complaint we will not hear back.
That’s it. There is no recourse to challenge the decision.
There isn’t even a confirmation that the email we sent
to this third party was received at all. Of course, after 24
hours we still couldn’t send out an email containing the
link.
Then it dawned on us, the Verizon employee’s automoton
behavior was reminiscent of a 2004 Hollywood comedy titled,
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galexy. The film’s plot
involves a race of Vogons who run the Vogon homeworld planet
just the way Verizon Central is run.
“Vogons are employed as the galactic government’s
bureaucrats.. Vogons are not actually evil, but bad-tempered,
bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn’t even
lift a finger to save their own grandmothers without orders
signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found,
subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried
in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucrat
When the human heroes in the story try to extricate themselves
from the stupidity of the Vogon perpectual bureucratic machine,
the unfortunate victims are repeatedly told in a monotonous
tone, “Resistance is Useless.” The Vogons never
stop to think. There is a simple reason, they can’t. Just
like Vogons, if the Verizon employees actually thought about
what they were saying to us, they could not keep pushing out
such nonsense. The illogic of the whole process doesn’t
stop them from pushing it out, regardless. If Verizon Central
says it’s the law, it’s the law and “Resistance
is useless”!
It’s no surprise that many other Verizon customers have
been effected by this Orwellian abuse of authority. In fact
we discovered that a lawsuit was settled in 2006 on this very
issue. Here are the results.
Settlements and Verdicts
Verizon
A class action lawsuit was filed against the telecommunications
company for allegedly blocking legitimate incoming emails to
certain Verizon.net subscribers. The class includes all business
and residential customers of Verizon FiOS, DSL, and dial-up
Internet services in the United States at any time from October
1, 2004 to May 31, 2005, who had use of one or more email accounts
on the Verizon.net email platform. Verizon adjusted its spam
filters to aggressively block messages from domains in Europe
and Asia. Instead of simply routing suspected spam into a separate
folder, Verizon bounced messages back to the sender without
notifying the intended recipient. Verizon has announced a tentative
settlement that would award customers $3.50 for each month between
October 1, 2004 and May 31, 2005 that he or she was a customer
of Verizon Internet Service. The maximum one can receive is
$28. (Apr-05-06) [ARS TECHNICA]
[SETTLEMENT INFORMATION] File Claim before August 9, 2006:
[OFFICIAL CLAIM FORM]
That was in 2006 and it doesn’t seem that Verizon Central
has changed its policy in any noticeable way, regardless of
whopping $28/ customer cost. Now we’re wondering how Verizon
got the idea in the first place that they had a right to secretly
make decisions regarding what can flow through emails without
accountability..
What is even more disturbing is realizing that Verizon’s
anti-spam campaign could easily be twisted to disguise censorship,
a kind of “No Fly” list for emails. Just like the
No Fly list, once you’ve made the list you won’t
know why and you may never be removed.
"When the people find they can vote themselves
money, that will herald the end of the republic."
- Fall Of The Republic - Buy
the DVD here
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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