Calling All Alltel Shareholders:
Unite Against Junk E-Mail

Author: Jim Youll Jim@newmediagroup.com
Original document posted: 5/13/97
Revised 5/24/97
 
This document was originally posted to the following newsgroups:
news.admin.net-abuse.email, misc.invest.stocks, misc.invest.marketplace, misc.invest.misc
and will be reposted periodically in the quest for more shareholders to join this effort.

 

If you are frustrated with junk and pornographic e-mail flooding your in-box, as most people on the 'net are, and are a shareholder of Alltel Corporation (NYSE: AT), please get in touch with me. You can help make a difference. I have had several telephone conversations with people at Alltel corporate and shareholder services, and will be glad to pass on their names/ numbers to legitimate shareholders who oppose OUR COMPANY facilitating or doing business with companies that allow this garbage to clog up millions of people's Internet mailboxes.

Now the AGIS network and AGIS' junk-mailing customers' computers were used to carry out a massive mail-bombing attack against our systems, my name and my company. This cannot be condoned and must be stopped.

Background

If you are not familiar with the situation, Alltel recently became a 5% owner of Apex Global Internet Services (AGIS) , an Internet backbone provider in Dearborn, MI, as part of a new Alltel project to sell Internet access in 9 states. (See http://www.alltel.com/overview/news/n411m19a.html for the official press release) This is a major expansion of their Internet-connectivity service. So, Alltel shareholders, we are also small-time minority owners of AGIS as well now.

AGIS has many customers, but one of them, Cyber Promotions, is responsible, some reports say, for at least 50% of all the junk e-mail flooding the Internet. My own experience shows that well over 50% of the junk email that comes to my company originates with Cyber Promotions customers and travels over AGIS-provided lines to get to me.

Cyber Promotions has had a number of other Internet-connectivity providers over the last two years, but there is a history of terminated contracts because of Cyber Promotions' activities and its reputation for not respecting the wishes of those who don't want unsolicited messages coming to them. The most recent incident occurred in April 1997: a Cyber Promotions contract with UUNet (a preeminent Internet backbone service provider) written on April 15 was cancelled by UUNet on April 16, according to UUNet. Alan Taffel, UUNet Vice President of Marketing, was quoted in Interactive Week ("WorldCom Aborts Cyber Promo Contract", April 28, 1997) saying "We will have no dealings with Cyber Promotions, either now or in the future... We do not condone spam in any way, shape or form."

Why does Alltel matter?
Because Alltel is staking its new project on connectivity and services provided by AGIS.

Alltel's partner, AGIS, will only say that it is "looking at the problem" but has publicly stated (see news.admin.net-abuse.email for references) that it does not intend to block junk e-mail.

Since late April, or earlier, AGIS has refused incoming mail from people who wrote complaint messages about junk that had come to them via AGIS (including me). Mail sent to complaint addresses at AGIS has been returned with error messages such as "refused - too many messages" and "we don't accept junk mail"... this is an insult to people who have legitimate complaints about something AGIS could easily stop.

Those who have tried to deal with AGIS on this point out that the comment "looking into it" from AGIS is generally viewed, as one correspondent put it, as "a statement of their commitment to continue facilitating the abuse while trying to placate the public with meaningless press-releases. They know that the spammers they harbor have refused to remove their victims even when demanded to do so!"

AGIS claimed on April 23 that it was "forming an industry-wide trade association" to allow people to be removed from junk e-mail lists, but so far nothing has come of it and the flood of junk e-mail is increasing daily. In the same press release, AGIS says that it "has refused to take a 'big brother' stance by... censoring its customers' business practices." The release further states that "It has... been AGIS' position that the Internet is an open marketplace where commerce... may take place in accordance with public demand."

Well, I have demanded that they stop allowing this junk to get to me, as have thousands of others. If that's not public demand, I don't know what is. Those demands (and requests and pleas) have been ignored.

Cyber Promotions says it will not assert control over the content of messages sent by its customers, many of whom have forged and altered the headers of the messages they send to make them untraceable. Cyber Promotions recently disconnected its 800 number because of all the people calling to complain.

Alltel must investigate reports that pornographic material reached minor children
There have been several allegations that inappropriate messages with what some consider pornographic content have reached the e-mail boxes of minors. While this is just a special case of the primary problem, I feel it deserves additional, specific attention and seek other shareholders to help force Alltel to look into this, determine if AGIS has facilitated the delivery of pornographic materials to minors, and to take immediate and drastic action if it has.

Call to action
Something has to be done. Of all the companies named above, Alltel is the only one that is both RESPONSIBLE and PUBLICLY HELD. I'm calling all Alltel shareholders to join with me in educating the people who make these decisions at Alltel, and to work together to pressure OUR COMPANY to either straighten out its business partner or leave them behind if they refuse to fix this problem immediately.

As a shareholder, I feel Alltel's alliance with AGIS is bad business. As a human being who needs his computer for business, I feel Alltel's alliance with AGIS is unconscionable. At the moment, I have clients whose offices have held off full-service e-mail connectivity because of concerns about junk and pornographic messages flooding their server. Junk messages with forged headers, many coming through AGIS lines, threaten to render e-mail virtually worthless for business.

If you are similarly interested in taking definitive, immediate action to pressure Alltel to help us out of this situation, please contact me now.

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Copyright 1997 Jim Youll, all rights reserved
This document may be freely distributed provided any such redistribution presents the document in its original unmodified form including the copyright notice and this message.