[mpen-dayton] Asking for help by Munsup

Hello everyone,

I have been doing my community service of publishing MPEN e-Newsletters for almost twenty years. Many of you have been reading my emails more than ten years and tens of thousands of you may have been doing so for several years, while many of you are recent subscribers.

If you ever send me messages or documents or announcements that appear in MPEN e-Newsletters, please read on, because this message is for you.

Over these twenty years, I have been paying much attention to SPAM, especially with attached files and embedded links to other websites. I am proud to say that there have been absolutely no significant incidents of my having sent or spread any viruses or malware.

However, the Internet world has been becoming more complex and subtle with regard to bulk emails. Internet Service Providers are restricting emails of large sizes and blocking bulk emails as SPAM based on their own standards. These restrictions apply to outgoing e-mails, like those I send from my own ISP, and also to incoming e-mails, like all those that you receive. For example, at the very bottom of this message, I have copied an email I received today from the ISP I use to distribute almost all MPEN e-Newsletters.

So, I have been encountering greater and greater barriers. My MPEN efforts are now the equivalent of a fulltime job.

To try to avoid even more time and trouble, I would like to compose my MPEN e-Newsletters in smaller sizes, avoiding any attachments and pictures as much as possible. So, I am asking you to help me when you send me messages or documents or announcements that might appear in MPEN e-Newsletters.

Specifically, please send such items without pictures, whenever possible, and otherwise try to send me items with modest file sizes. In particular, I prefer to have text (or HTML) versions of your items instead of flyers (e.g., pdf files or PowerPoint files) of large size.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Best, Munsup

------------------------- Copy of the email   --------------------------------
From: Bruce, ***** Internet Services
Subject: Potentially dangerous attachments in mail

Please share this information with your staff.

As most of you know, we aggressively tests your inbound mail for viruses and spam.

You probably also know that due to increased probability of virus files hidden in attachments, all executable files and zip files are refused.

We have a concern about Microsoft Word and Excel files.  We are seeing attachments coming in with Macros enabled that are getting past anti-virus engines because they change faster than the anti-virus engines can keep up.

Even though they are not detected as viruses, we are reasonably certain that these are potentially dangerous files.

While we can block all Microsoft documents, many of you will have your work flow interrupted if we do so.

In the meantime, we want you to be very thoughtful about opening any document that is sent to you.  If you are not expecting it, do not open it.
------------------------- Copy of the copied email   --------------------------------