Attention Australian Visitors

Update - June 28, 1999

Another 500 plus Telstra customer addresses have been added to our permanent blocks as the result of a new round of porn spam from Australia as a new round of pron spam began overnight. This latest assault is promoting what it calls 'TEENY SEX' web sites.

It's unfortunate that Telstra has become such a magnet for persistent spammers and doesn't seem to care about the damage they cause the reputation of the Australian Internet comnunity or the additional work it causes the recipients of this garbage in staff time and cleanup.

Most of the sites in this round of spam appear to be owned by the following Telstra customer:

Interactive Network Services
PO Box 1240
MILTON
QLD 4064
Australia

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Update - June 7, 1999

Due to continued porn spam from Telstra and a total lack of response from the company, we have begun to systematically block email from portions of the Telstra network. Today, more than 500 Australian server locations were permanently barred from sending email to us.

We regret taking this action, but given Telstra's apparent lack of concern about wasting our staff time and limited resources, we have no choice.

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May 26, 1999
Because of the increasing amounts of pornographic junk mail coming from Telstra customers, and the company's failure to respond or do anything about it, we are seriously considering closing our mail servers to Telstra customers.

If we do this, Telstra customers will no longer be able to email us at The Gathering of the Clans.

In addition, we are also considering barring Telstra customers from our web site because we are finding an increasing number of harvesting programs originating at Telstra going through our site looking for valid email addresses.

It would be tragic to have to close our email addresses and the Gathering of the Clans to visitors from Australia who are Telstra customers, but the problem is growing every day and Telstra does not seem to care about the annoyance and the waste of staff time this small percentage of porn merchants is causing.

If you are one of our many Australian visitors, we would encourage you to contact your Telstra representative and inform them about this situation.