I can only answer if you know what an ISP is and how it does business. If you know, skip down to the heavy lettering. Most people don't know, so I will explain here;
An ISP (Internet Service Provider) is simply a local computer system somewhere that links you (your PC) to the worldwide network of computer systems (the Internet). An ISP is like a local switchboard and has several customers, like an old switchboard had many phones connected to it.
Remember, the 'net was first formed by college and Defense Department computer systems but now has a bunch of commercial systems connected to it. These commercial systems (ISPs) were built by entrepenures to allow businesses and people (ordinary joes like you and me) to access the 'net (for a price, of course). ISPs provide websites by selling disk space (about every company now has a website!). For ANYONE to connect to the 'net, they must go thru an ISP somewhere. If there's not one (or more) in town, they can connect to one by long distance. That costs more and is slower.
In the early days of common internet use, you had to be directly connected to a computer somewhere to get onto the 'net (like a college computer). But I admit, even back as far as 1973 (dinosaurs!) we were using phoneline modems to connect to University computers. We used clunky teletypes back then which had no TV screen; just printed out a small alphanumeric response on a roll of yellow paper. Wow. And we thot we were really hip by communicating with a distant computer. We wrote little programs in BASIC and saved them on paper tape. How pathetic. But I digress.
Ten years ago, to enable home PCs to access the net, entrepenures came up with the idea of connecting you to a remote computer system by your home phone using long distance under a special billing plan. This was often a phone company's idea, or the entrepenure would buy phone line usage. Usually the entrepenure rounded up a little, new computer company to handle the subscribers and talk to the computer systems already on the 'net. This grew to become a specialty and the entrepenural companies became big. Thus the "subscriber companies" were born, AOL or Yahoo or MSN's Hotmail or whatever.
Nowdays, Subscriber Companies may or may not have you (your PC) talking to their own computer system. To avoid long distance costs and delays, some leased out "space" on new local computer companies. Little local computer systems were springing up everywhere to satisfy the growing need for 'net access. The point is, there are TONS of little computer systems (ISPs) everywhere that connect people and businesses to the net. These systems are the ISPs that we use. Subscriber Companies would prefer their own little exclusive system for any given area but they can't build everywhere at once, so they "hire" an ISP if they must. That's better than missing out on customers - UNLESS the ISP somehow gives the SC a bad name by being slow, crashing a lot, or violating SC policy.
Those various little ISPs popping up everywhere are good because they provide those of us in the remote areas cheaper 'net access: no long distance.
Now the bad part;
Some of these ISPs don't care who they provide service to. Some of their customers are the jerks who produce and send "spam" for extra income. Who pays them to send it? Don't get me started on that. I haven't even answered the first question yet.
For a while, some of the spammers were Subscriber Company (SC) customers. Thankfully, the major SCs no longer allow customers to "spam" from their systems. Some of the ISP companies these SCs hired did not care about this edict and let customers send "spam" from their ISPs. The SCs had to quit dealing with some ISP companies who would not cooperate. But it is all fixed now. Aside from Email Address Pirating (EAPing), you don't get "spam" from SC customers anymore.
There are STILL some small, stupid (and probably desperate) Subscriber Companies that seem to allow spamming. These probably just haven't bothered to crack down on the jerks sending spam. ANY SC that sends HTF spam is blocked. If you are a subscriber to them and have been blocked, cancel your subscription and move on (except when you are a victim of EAP blocking; see below).
What is Spamming thru "EAPing"?
That ranks with child-molesting and is soon to be illegal. It is when a jerk replaces his own crappy email sender ID (a wild bunch of alphanumeric characters) with that of a decent human being. You (the recipient) expect the decent person is contacting you. You read the email only to probably find something the spammer himself desperately needs; like "penis enlargement is possible..." blah blah, or "get out of debt..." blah blah. There is nothing most of us can do about EAPing except delete email from an unlikely sender or any email with a suspicious subject line.
If you are blocked out of emailing HTF, we urge you to switch to another ISP or SC. Contacting your ISP about spammers will do no good because many are paid by the spammers to look the other way, and a hot spammer will pay for more accounts than you do so the jerks administering that ISP company will listen to him rather than you. Going with a major SC is a good way to be sure, like MSN's hotmail which is free. However, HTF only suggests hotmail. We do not indorse it.
One other thing about EAPing and blocking; HTF is not perfect. We don't have the time and means to identify those occasions when we get EAPed spam (which makes us block out an ISP or SC that is actually a good guy). There is little we can do but await legislation that makes law enforcement "seek out and destroy" the EAPers. Oh, happy day. Hey, the telemarketers have bit the dust! It might happen soon with spammer-jerks, too.
In the meantime, we DO hope to hear from you!
Sincerely,
Don Ducote, Pres. HTF Inc.