All incoming e-mail is extensively filtered for spam, adverstisements and general junk.

The volume of junk e-mail is now so high that extreme measures are necessary to keep e-mail usable as a medium of communication.

All incoming e-mail is therefore classified and any mail assigned to a junk category is automatically deleted, after noting the originating IP-numbers for possible legal action. Filtering occurs at various levels and starts with the University spam-filtering system described here.

Note: if e-mail is classifed as junk, I will not even see it !!!

So, if you are sending e-mail, please make sure that it is factual, avoids advertising material, and contains a sensible Subject line. Any e-mail that does not have a Subject line or, worse, a Subject line such as "good news", "something interesting" and other non-specific references is almost sure to be deleted before I see it. One word Subject lines are also treated as suspicious.

Because of the huge amount of spam, certain experimental filtering methods are being tried out: it is possible that due to unfortunate combinations of features in an e-mail, that perfectly harmless emails may be deleted. So if I have not replied to you, this may be the case: please try sending a further e-mail to check whether I indeed received the original message or not. This paragraph applies recursively.

I am sorry about any inconvenience that this may cause, but until e-mail is again freed of this abuse it will be unavoidable. I urge you to support all possible actions that will help remove this problem while keeping web and e-mail access open to those who want to communicate rather than sell, steal or swindle.

John Bateman, April 2004