Every year I share the following with as many people as will listen.

I am the son of two Pearl Harbor Survivors. My Dad and Mom both survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1941, my Dad, who passed away on January 15, 2005, was a young sailor from Detroit and my mom, who now lives in Palm Springs, was a 17 year old local girl. They met in Hilo, Hawaii in January of 1941. They were married in June of 1941 in Honolulu by a Justice of the Peace and on December 7, 1941, they lived in Navy Housing Area Three (NHA 3, on Ninth Street) right outside of the Main Gate of Pearl Harbor (For those of you familiar with Pearl Harbor, you will know that close by the Main Gate of Pearl Harbor is also the Main Gate of Hickam Field, also destroyed that day).

My Mom and Dad's survival story of December 7 and the rest of the War is an amazing series of events. Not only did they survive that day, but shortly after December 7, my dad volunteered for Submarine Duty and they both traveled to New London, CT and Dad attended Sub School. They then headed back to Pearl Harbor where my Dad made several submarine war patrols in the South Pacific (those of you who are history buffs know that many of our subs in the Pacific were sunk with crews lost). I was raised surrounded by many who were Pearl Harbor Survivors and Submarine Veterans of WWII...all heroes to me, not only the men, but the wives who suffered those years of war and struggle as well. Each year there are fewer of them around...but I will always remember them.

Every year since the year I left home when I was 19 (1968), I call my Dad and Mom on December 7, no matter where I happen to be. We talk about Pearl Harbor and where they were that day, and what they were doing. "Happy Pearl Harbor Day" is the way I start each of those calls. I have known their story well, but I always call my parents to relive their Pearl Harbor experience with them. Last year was the first Pearl Harbor Day without Pop...I called my Mom and we shared stories about Pop...this year, I am driving to Palm Springs to spend the afternoon with my Mom. For many years my parents lived next door to me in San Diego. I was very lucky to have both of them so close for so much of my life.

The story of Pearl Harbor is part of my life and childhood memories. It was one of the defining moments in my parent's life, if not the defining moment and it had a major impact on my life. As a small boy in the early 1950s, my family lived in Navy Housing (NHA 1), right outside the Main Gate of Pearl Harbor. Our living room furniture was rattan, our carpets were lahala mats. In 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades I attended Pearl Harbor Kai Elementary School. Our classrooms were Quonset huts and we had concrete bomb shelters in our back yard...constant reminders of Sunday, December 7, 1941. When I was a young boy living in Hawaii in 1950, WWII and the attack on Pearl Harbor were still recent history.

For a survivor's perspective of what happened on December 7, 1941 (Dictated in 1991 by my Dad to my wife Janie)...go to:

Is there a way to increase the flow of legitimate e-mail and decrease the spam?

Yes. Implementation of simple standards (known as RFCs) can improve the current flow of legitimate e-mail.

NOTE: RFC is an acronym for “Requests for Comments” which is a set of technical and organizational notes about the Internet (originally the ARPANET). Memos in the RFC series discuss many aspects of computer networking, including Internet protocols, procedures, programs, and concepts, as well as meeting notes, opinions. For more information on the history of the RFC series, go to ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2555.txt

The official specification documents of the Internet Protocol suite that are defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) are recorded and published as “standards track RFCs”.

Another solution for AEs who are not receiving all of their e-mail is to discuss blocked mail with their ISP, which may help or it may get them nowhere as technology as companies always like to blame "the other guy." At InternetCrusade we refer to this as the "Chain of blame."

America Online blocks some half billion pieces a day. In everyone's attempts to reduce the flow of SPAM, filtering is taking place to the detriment of all those who want to continue to use e-mail as an effective business communication tool.

ISPs and other email carriers have been frantically reviewing their rules regarding accepting email. E-mail may be blocked (rejected) if:

1. The message being sent exceeds limits set by the recipients ISP
2. The message being sent has too many addressees in the address fields (To, Cc, Bcc)
3. The message is being sent to an AOL user (we need to move REALTORS away from AOL as their business communication manager).
4. The recipient has attempted to utilize spam filtering software and "good" e-mail is being filtered
5. The recipient has included certain word blocks, which can block otherwise good e-mail (I once had an e-mail blocked because the word Middlesex was in the subject line)
6. Standards are not being adhered to by e-mail providers who do not really understand e-mail. Prior to the days of SPAM, it was not as important for e-mail providers to know all the required e-mail standards. All e-mail was delivered. Today, if certain standards are not met, e-mail may be blocked by legitimate e-mail providers. "Good" e-mail is being blocked because to the intended recipients e-mail provider, the e-mail being blocked "looks" like SPAM (identified as such because of information in the header of the e-mail that has the characteristics of SPAM).

Certain ISPs only accept email from servers that comply with certain standards (such as RFCs mentioned above).

Some well known MLS vendors, Web hosts, e-mail marketing companies and lead generation web sites do not comply, and as a result, lots of legitimate email (false positives) is being rejected.

In addition, a simple group of tests called SAV (senders address
verification) are also being used by major ISPs and mail handlers.

SAV (senders address verification) is "call back to sender" which attempts to verify if the sender is legitimate before accepting the email. This stops the forgery of senders addresses (what most spammers attempt to do).

Detecting the rejection of legitimate mail is made difficult because:

1. The recipient, don't know it's being rejected.

2. The administrator of the "sending service", (MLS, web servers, etc), is not informing you, their client, that email for you is being rejected.

3. Some vendors deny the situation even exists, BUT IT DOES EXIST.

At InternetCrusade, we work with vendors (as much as they will allow us) to help them solve their issues.

InternetCrusade has a system in place that allows us to trace and track each attempted email delivery so we can prove to vendors (and our customers) what the issues are in the first instance.

For over 10 years, email has been a core product for InternetCrusade and we have been delivering email (primarily to the real estate industry).

InternetCrusade’s Vice President of Technology, Mike Barnett suggests the following "best practices" which assure that mail will be delivered with the fewest difficulties for ISPs. Please pass along this technical information to those responsible for your e-mail system:

DNS:

1. The web server must have a fully qualified hostname, like label.domain.com which has an A record.

label.domain.com.  A ip.ad.re.ss

and the webserver should not be just domain.com, but label.domain.com.

2. the IP of the webserver should have a PTR hostname, label.domain.com ...

ss.re.ad.ip.in-addr.arpa. PTR  hostname.domain.com.

3. ... whose A record should own that IP:

hostname.domain.com.  A ip.ad.re.ss

In SMTP:

4. the webserver's Helo hostname must have a fully qualified domain name, label.domain.com, that ideally is the same as the PTR hostname (but not
required)

HELO label.domain.com.

... which itself must have a A record

label.domain.com. A ip.ad.re.ss

5. the envelope sender address used by the emailing web application ...

MAIL FROM:

... must accept _inbound_ mail at the MX machine for sender.domain (sender address verification).  And it should not use a "null sender" or "nobody@"
or "www@" or "web@" or "apache@" or other default/generic name, but something self-explanatory like :

MAIL FROM:

MAIL FROM:

MAIL FROM:

... meaning that if anybody, like postfix's sender address verification function, tried to send mail back TO: complaint_form@domain.com, the MX (mail server) for domain.com would accept it.

6. The above sender domain doesn't have to be, and probably should not be, sender@label.domain.com but just sender@domain.com. If it were sender@label.domain.com, there would have to be an MX record and mail domain setup for label.domain.com, which is usually not what the client needs or wants.

7. the MX for domain.com must accept mail for abuse@domain.com and postmaster@domain.com and that msg but be delivered to a real person.

Spam Blocking Software

There are many different applications that promise to limit spam, both client side (on your computer) and server side (on your ISPs server). The problem is that none of them are perfect and they often block not only spam, but legitimate e-mail.

A false positive occurs when spam blocking software incorrectly identifies genuine email as spam. You cannot trust these applications to block only spam, and so you end up wasting time sorting through “spam folders.”

There is also the other side of the coin, the miscategorizing of spam as legitimate e-mail.

Black Lists, White Lists, and Gray Lists

Some ISPs will block all mail from servers that have the appearance of spamming activity. Blocking all mail from a server is black listing.

White listing is just the opposite, accepting mail from a server or individual regardless of the appearance of the e-mail…even if the e-mail has characteristics of spam.

Gray listing is temporarily blocking e-mail and can be quite effective in reducing spam.

If an e-mail is not accepted by the server to whom the e-mail is sent, the sending server will normally try again over periods of time and eventually give up if the e-mail cannot be delivered. It makes sense for sending servers to operate this way as there could be any of a number of reasons a single piece of e-mail is not accepted at a particular moment in time (examples: breakdown in connectivity, power interruption, filters, full mail box, etc).
 
Many spammers are using "zombie" computers to send spam (computers of the innocent upon whom a worm or trojan is planted for the benefit of the spammer). When these zombies generate spam, there is no allowance for undeliverable mail. If the spam is not delivered on the first attempt, the zombie will not send it again.
 
Now, what "gray listing" does (as opposed to white listing and black listing), is block all incoming e-mail on the first attempt. It then lets it through on the second attempt. You would be surprised at how much spam this eliminates.

What can you do about the current state of e-mail?

There are steps one can take to both eliminate large amounts of spam and have a greater assurance of delivery of one’s e-mail. It all begins with education. Don’t be afraid to have frank conversations with vendors and ISPs when you feel your e-mail is not being delivered.

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Saul Klein e-PRO/GRI/CFP is President of InternetCrusade®, the home of REALTOR® e-PRO and NAR’s Domain and e-mail VIP Partner. InternetCrusade® has a number of different programs available to local associations which provide the associations with revenues and their members with effective, efficient services. Send an e-mail to Saul@InternetCrusade.com for more information.