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OSP has the most Points of Presence of any ISP. We now cover 30 towns in Papua New Guinea This means faster local speeds.
OSP has a launched InetMobile. This is a 3G/GPRS/EDGE based USB Modem that can be used anywhere in PNG that has Digicel Coverage. Speeds are >500Kbps on 3G.
Vehicle tracking via the web enables businesses to manage their vehicles better. See I-Net Track at here.
Hotspot access at Airports and hotels. Look for the SSID = OSP Hotspot at the International and Domestic.
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| 1. What is spam? 2. Who sends spam? 3. Where do they get my email address? 4. Why is spam so difficult to combat? 5. How do I deal with spam? 6. How do I find out where the email came from? 7. Who do I report spam to? 8. How do I avoid spam? 9. How do I disguise my email address? 10. How do I filter my email? |
| 1. What is spam? There are a few conflicting definitions of spam. For the purpose of this FAQ, we are only talking about email spam. Email spam is essentially unsolicited commercial or junk email sent to a number of users at once. Some "spammers" (as people who send spam messages are known) send tens of thousands of messages at a time. This can place a huge strain on the already overworked Internet infrastructure. The majority of Internet users disapprove of spam. In fact, many hate it with a passion. Users caught spamming will generally have their Internet account terminated by their Internet Service Provider. There have been instances where spammers have been successfully sued by Internet Service Providers to recoup their costs of combatting spam. |
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| 2. Who sends spam? A percentage of first-time spammers are genuinely unaware that their actions generate such feelings of animosity. They believe that spamming is a cheap, legitimate and effective way to market their products to a large audience. There are also a number of "professional" spammers, who sell their "marketing" services to unsuspecting businesses and individuals looking to peddle their products and services online. Many professional spammers do not disclose the fact that they use spam as their main marketing tool. |
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| 3. Where do they get my email address? Online South Pacific does not sell or otherwise disclose its users' email addresses to third parties. Spammers use a number of techniques to collect email addresses: Similarly, if you participate in email discussion groups, it is possible (though not as easy) for spammers to collect email addresses from messages sent to the list. If you own a Web site, and include your email address as part of your contact information, this information is publicly available to both legitimate and illegitimate users. Many spammers employ sophisticated software programs that sift through newsgroups, Web sites and other public sources of information, looking for email addresses. They are able to harvest millions of email addresses in this manner. If you have ever entered an online competition that requires you to submit your email details (as most do), you may have unwittingly added yourself to the mailing list of a spammer. If you use a chat service (such as IRC), and have entered your email address in the personal information section of the software that you are using, you may be displaying your email address to other chat users. Even if you have never disclosed your email address in any of these forums, you may still receive spam. How? Spammers have been known to make up email addresses. From a purely statistical viewpoint, if you generate millions of random email addresses, you are likely to create a percentage of valid ones. |
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| 4. Why is spam so difficult to combat? Spammers generally go to great lengths to hide their identity, which can make determining who sent a spam message quite difficult. Some spammers take advantage of trial accounts offered by Internet Service Providers. They sign up using false names, log on, send their spam messages, then log off, never to return. Others "forge" their email message in an effort to hide its true origins. For instance, they might configure their email program so that it inserts a fictional email address in the From: field. While it is often a straightforward task to detect a fictitious email address and identify the real email address, few recipients will have the time or skills required to do this. By hiding their identity, spammers hope to avoid receiving a mass of emailed complaints sent by irate users. They also hope to prevent users complaining to their Internet Service Provider. Most Internet Service Providers will terminate a user's account on the spot if s/he is found to have engaged in spamming. As spammers rarely reveal their true identity in their email messages, you should not trust that the sender or reply-to addresses are valid. |
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| 5. How do I deal with spam? There are a number of things that users can do to avoid or minimise the amount of spam they receive: In the unlikely event that the reply address is actually valid (few are), spammers generally use such replies as a means of verifying email addresses. By replying, all you are doing is confirming that your email address is valid, so the spammer knows that his/her messages are getting through. If you are proficient in using your email software, you should examine the headers of the message to ascertain which Internet Service Provider the spammer was using, and send a message of complaint to them. |
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| 6. How do I find out where the email came from? Examining email messages to ascertain the true identity of a spammer, or at least the true origin of the spam, is not a simple process. It is not "required knowledge", and if you have no interest in this topic, feel free to skip forward to the next section. When you receive an email message, it contains various information about who sent the message, which Mail Server was used to send it, and the details of any other Mail Server that may have handled the message on its way to your mailbox. Most of these details are hidden by email programs. However, you are usually given the option of displaying them. Many email programs have a menu or toolbar option that you can access in order to "display headers" in an email. In Outlook Express, you can display the headers of an email message by following these steps: 2. Click on the File menu, and select Properties. 3. Click on the Details tab in the dialog box that appears. 4. Click on the Message Source button. 2. Select "Select All" from the pop-up menu. The text will then be "marked". 3. Click the right mouse button again, and this time choose "Copy". A copy of the message and headers is then saved in memory. 4. Close the dialog box. |
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| 7. Who do I report spam to? As mentioned earlier, do not send email to the spammer. Your best option is to complain to the spammer's Internet Service Provider with a view to getting the spammer's account terminated. Most Internet Service Providers have a special email address for reporting the misbehaviour of their users. However, not all Internet Service Providers operate such an account. While it may take time to complain, it is a worthwhile process. Most Internet Service Providers will move quickly to counsel ignorant users against spamming or, if the user has a history of spamming, cancel his or her account. Spending a few minutes tracking down a spammer and complaining may save you (and many other Internet users) much time in the future. |
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| 8. How do I avoid spam? There are a number of strategies that users can adopt to avoid or minimise spam: Avoid including your real email address in any message you send to a newsgroup or mailing list (spammers regularly "harvest" such discussion forums for email addresses included in messages). If you join email discussion lists, you should ask the owner/moderator what steps have been taken to ensure that the email addresses of participants are kept private. It is surprisingly easy to obtain a list of member's email addresses, thanks to the nature of discussion list administration software. It is also, however, easy for the list owner/moderator to implement safeguards. Don't publish your email address on your Web site. If you must publish your email address, create a graphic icon that contains your email address (spammer's search software only look for email addresses that appear in the text of a Web site, and cannot grab your email address if it is in graphic form). Alternatively use a form that allows users to submit email messages via your Web site. When used in conjunction with a CGI script, you need not reveal your email address on your Web site. Learn how to make use of "email anonymisers". These are services that allow you to send email anonymously - that is, your email is stripped of identifying information (such as your email address) before it is sent. This will ensure that your email address is not included in messages sent to public discussion forums. Not all discussion forums, however, allow users to post anonymously. |
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| 9. How do I disguise my email address? If you find it inconvenient to operate different email accounts, or use other techniques for concealing your email address, you have the option of "munging" your email address. Email address munging involves inserting extra characters in your email address that will fool the automated software that spammers use to harvest email addresses, but which does not trick those trying to send you legitimate email. For instance, say your email address was: james@online.net.pg You might reconfigure your software to show that your email address is: james@nospam.online.net.pg Most users will realise that they should remove the "nospam." component of the email address before trying to reply to you. However, automated email address harvesting programs will consider it to be a valid email address, and won't strip the extra component from the address, with the result that the spammer will use an invalid email address when trying to send spam to you. There are a number of different variations to this trick: james@online.net.pg.com (the extra .com will fool most automated programs). james@delete-this-bit.online.net.pg james AT online DOT com DOT pg |
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| 10. How do I filter my email? Most popular email programs offer a filtering capability. Using filtering rules, you can instruct your email program to perform various tasks on incoming email. For example, you might have it flag email from your friends, and automatically move it to a folder named "Personal". You might have it flag email from specific clients, and automatically move it to a folder named 'Work'. You can also use such filters to automatically delete spam. Most spammers follow the same, tired formula when they write their messages. After you receive a handful or so of spam messages, you will start to see a few common characteristics, such as: - indiscriminate use of dollar symbols (e.g. $$$) - "hot" marketing words, like "money", "cash", "millions", "FREE" etc. - they are sent from obviously invalid email addresses (e.g. friend@public.com) - It is possible to configure your email program to flag all messages that contain suspected contents, and send it automatically to the Trash folder. However, it is probably a good idea to trial your customised filters for a few weeks, and move suspected spam to its own folder, say "Junk", and then periodically check this folder to ensure that legitimate email was not caught before you delete the messages. Interceptor - http://www.grok.co.uk/interceptor/ SpamBuster - http://www.contactplus.com/index2.htm Spamicide - http://www.cix.co.uk/~net-services/library/ Spam Hater - http://www.cix.co.uk/~net-services/library/ SpammerSlammer - http://www.spammerslammer.com/ MailTalkX - http://www.softbytelabs.com/ |
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