December 14, 2002

It has recently come to our attention that our IP address 209.235.17.55 is among a large block of IP addresses that are being listed by relays.osirusoft.com, which is a blacklist maintainer. If your ISP or your e-mail administrator uses relays.osirusoft.com to filter incoming mail, you will not be able to receive any e-mail from us. There is nothing that we can do about this situation for now. You have three choices: (1) request that unicode.org 209.235.17.55 be put onto an explicit "white list" at your domain or ISP, (2) read the Unicode mail list on-line via our web archives, or (3) subscribe to the list via an address or domain that does not block mail from 209.235.17.55. (There are several well-known providers of free web-based e-mail accounts, including Hotmail.com and Yahoo.com.)

When a user attempts to subscribe to our mail list the request for subscription is always scanned by a human administrator. If we detect, through scanning mail bounces, that your confirmation message is being rejected by your domain because of this listing by relays.osirusoft.com, we may attempt to contact you by e-mail from a another domain to let you know that your subscription cannot be fulfilled.

You can always reach us by filling in the online contact form, or by telephone or snail mail.

Details, for those who wish to know more

Our domain, Unicode.org, is hosted by DellHost.com among a segment of the network that is apparently under the control of Sprint.net or Interliant.com. These providers have been identified by relays.osirusoft.com as being spammer-friendly. In particular (we have been told) for information one should see this page. A block of IP addresses is being listed in an attempt to gain the attention of those who could do something about the alleged spammers. We have no further information. As long as relays.osirusoft.com or any other black list maintainers believe that the providers of our network connectivity are involved in spam operations, we will be unable to serve users who subscribe to those lists. For further information, please see this page and this page.

We are endeavoring to find a solution to the current situation, short of the catastrophic step of moving our services to another provider.