Two problems appear to have emerged since the introduction of spam filters.

The first is a truncation of mail messages containing specific characters. For example sending the following file through my Freeserve mail, results in a received file containing nothing after the 2 !!!!!! :
1
2
.
3
4

Someone reported to me yesterday that they signed up for FSmail yesterday and the new account immediately failed this test.

The second is truncation of digest mail. Probably the same underlying issue really:
Freeserve FSmail is chopping the end off some of my incoming Emails, as acknowledged by Freeserve Technical Support on 12/4: "We have followed exactly what you are doing (thank you for the
instructions) and can confirm that the error is with FSmail itself."

Details:

The problem was first observed on a mail received from the Yahoo Groups Server
Received: from n7.grp.scd.#### (n7.grp.scd.#### [66.218.66.91])
Sat, 3 Apr 2004 07:18:50 +0200 (CEST)

The problem occurs frequently on text which has been generated by weblist servers. I have problems with mail from Yahoo Groups, AOL ListServ, with an AOL log forwarded by an NTLWorld user as a crosscheck, and with forwarding a webpage of text which is also a weblist log. Of the 20 digests received in the last 36 hours, 30% were shortened. The maximum loss has been 90% of the file.

The problem appears completely repeatable. If the same file is sent it is always truncated at the same length. It is truncated whether the text is embedded in the main message text, or sent as an attachment.

The problem appears independent of the source - truncation of files has occured with files that have been sent by an NTLworld user, my own Freeserve account, Freeserve tech support, AOL Listserv, and Yahoo Groups. (Its possible that it doesnt apply to all though - one test sending the file to hotmail and back appeared to show that hotmail sending the file to me did not trigger the problem).

The problem is not occuring at download to my local machine because; it occurs on different receiving machines, and the file size can already be seen to be truncated by checking my inbox on the webmail server before download.

Five other freeserve user on Yahoo Groups and AOLListServ have reported the identical problem.

My problem can be demonstrated by following these instructions:
Save the following list archive from the web: http://bubl.####/mail/bild/0205.txt and send it as
an attachment the Freeserve account being tested, the sent attachment size is 232kB, and the received attachment size is 13.4kB. I have repeated similar tests many times and the cutoff is in *exactly* the same place in the text.

The only other clues I have is that there is a section in that file (about 1/4 way down) which starts "Abstract" and has some overscore characters in. If the file is chopped off shortly after this and sent it truncates. If I remove all 5 overscore characters in that section, the whole of the shortened version of the file sends correctly. However thats not the only problem with the file, it only works if you use the first third of the file, there are other problems later in the file that also stop it sending and they are not so obvious as the overscore characters. If I take the para with the offending characters and insert it another Email which doesnt have problems, it doesnt appear to create the problem, so there is some subtle problem relating to both the characters, and the context in the particular file.

Freeserve time to fix problem:
21 Emails to get their attention so far...
9 users with problem confirmed...
22 days since problem began...
15 days since problem reported.....
13 days since problem confirmed by Freeserve Tech Support
600 readers of my public forum reports
5500 readers of Yahoo groups support list ....... and counting.

Its interesting that there isnt a big fuss on the web about this - presumably its mainly affecting list digest, and perhaps some specific subset of Freeserve users. The timing is very close to the arrival of the spamfilters, but doesnt coincide with the appearance of the spam check messages at the end of the headers, which occured on 6th April. I believe they have added virus checking running now - does anyone know when that was activated, or whether it was updated on the 3rd?

Freeserve Tech Support continue to investigate the problem. Following an earlier FS tech support EMail where they suggested that Yahoo sourced spam was the problem, and I pointed out that that does not correlate with the second issue identified, that specific file content seems to break transmission of the file, Freeserve have not made any further statements about what they believe is happening, but have requested further information from me on the problem (23/4) and I await their further response.

Phil