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SEVERAL ISSUES There are currently several issues of note which SoVerNet customers should be aware of. The message below discusses a resolved problem that affected some customers in the Rutland and Montpelier regions, a new virus which seems to be circulating, a particular piece of unsolicited email which has garnered a strong response, and some transient issues with our outsourced news provider. Some numbers in the Rutland and Montpelier regions were experiencing routing problems beginning last night, September 19th, which prevented customers dialing the affected numbers from browsing. Alternate numbers for the area were unaffected and the problem was corrected around 10:00 AM this morning. In general, most exchanges have alternate numbers available for situations of this sort. For a complete list of options for your exchange, check the full access list which is available by sending email to our auto-responder: numbers@sover.net from your SoVerNet account, or via the Account Tools . In other news, we have seen a recent sharp increase in the number of customers infected with the network.vbs worm. The nature of this worm is such that it's victims become unwitting agents of its transfer. The network.vbs worm cannot be filtered on our end without substantial undesirable side effects. We will be contacting infected customers, either by phone or in email as they are identified. For more information on the network.vbs worm see: http://www.cert.org/incident_notes/IN-2000-02.html Over the weekend a politician sent out an unsolicited bulk mailing to many of our customers bearing the Subject: Please help me get on the ballot! This message has generated a large number of complaints and inquiries and we have filed an official complaint with the sender's ISP. To reassure customers, we do not give out our customers' email addresses individually or in bulk. Spammers have many methods of acquiring email addresses and we are investigating the methods used by this individual to see if there is anything that can be done to prevent such action in the future. Customers will also be happy to hear that work on incoming spam filters is almost complete. These filters will not block all incoming spam but should significantly reduce the total volume. There will be a large announcement when they become available. Finally, our news provider has been experiencing intermittent troubles over the last five days which some customers have inquired about. They are currently engaged in a substantial upgrade to their servers and intermittent outages, slow downs and posting problems have resulted. For details on the progress of their maintenance see: http://www.usenetserver.com/network.html Our network monitors keep a close eye on news services and are quick to contact the news provider in question to alert them to problems. News is a service that has grown exponentially over the years and it seems that even the best news providers are unable to provide 100% uptime. We have found our current providers to be extremely accessible and responsive to our network monitors. Recently we beta tested a number of alternate news providers all of whom were highly recommended. The overwhelming consensus of staff and customers involved in the testing process was that our current news provider is head and shoulders above the nearest competition. Please do not hesitate to let us know if you have any questions or concerns about any of the issues above. |
