Charity fights against overzealous spam filters

VSO has workers in 70 countries and relies on email contact

Charity Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) has overcome some unique spam filtering problems by switching suppliers.

The international development organisation has volunteers working in 70 countries with a high dependency on email for communication. But the blocking of genuine emails and increasing spam volumes were hampering operations.

‘The nature of our work, such as running HIV and AIDS projects in southern Africa, means that legitimate emails have words often banned by blunt email filters,’ said David Sims, VSO technical services manager.

‘In Vietnam, for example, the currency is the dong, but that could cause email to be blocked as it has another meaning. Funding proposals were being blocked as get-rich-quick spam.’

And with an office in the Pacific island of Vanuatu, a primary source of global spam, VSO was also having its sites automatically blacklisted by email monitoring services.

The charity was spending half a day per week ensuring legitimate emails were received. But a deal with on-demand spam filtering firm Postini solved the problem by redirecting VSO’s domains through the supplier’s data centres.

‘The vast bulk of spam has been removed, but users can manage their own quarantine systems and check emails that might be doubtful,’ said Sims.