Bundle Up With Santel
All Santel residential telephone subscribers have received the postcard and may have read the newspaper insert and billstuffer about Santel’s offer to “Bundle Up and Save!”.  Santel is proud to offer our residential subscribers the following bundle options: Unlimited long distance, local telephone service, voice mail, calling features, broadband internet and cable TV. And we’re confident that we have a bundle that will fit YOUR communication needs.

Whether you are both a Santel Internet and TV subscriber, or have no connection to either, Santel has a bundle that you should know about. To learn more about the bundle options, email bundle@santel.net or call the Santel office by dialing 777 from any exchange or 1-888-978-7777 if you are out of the Santel exchange area and have questions on “Bundling Up with Santel”.

New Website
Visit the following new Santel-sponsored website:

• Serfling Farms - www.serflingfarms.com

Ronald McDonald Dental Bus in Sanborn County
The Ronald McDonald Dental Bus will be in the Woonsocket School Parking Lot from Monday, October 13 through Friday, October 17. Anyone living in Sanborn County ages 0-21 can take advantage of FREE dental service which includes: cleanings, sealants, x-rays, fillings, minor oral surgery and oral health education. For more information or to sign up for this free service, contact Tara Weber at 605-796-4112. The Dental Bus is sponsored by the Woonsocket Elementary Parent Club, Horizon Health Care, First National Bank South Dakota, Heil Electric, Hegg Insurance, and Dakotaland Federal Credit Union.

Used Book Sale in Woonsocket
The Woonsocket Library will hold a Used Book Sale in the High School Commons on Tuesday, October 14 (12:00 noon to 9:00 p.m.) and Wednesday, October 15 (8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.) Hard cover books are $1.00 and paperbacks are $.50, unless marked otherwise. Magazines sell for $0.10. Videos and audio material will be priced as marked. On Wednesday, you can have your choice of books for $3.00/bagful.

Holiday Craft Fair in Woonsocket
There will be a Holiday Craft Fair at the Woonsocket Community Center on Saturday, October 25 from 8:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. Featured vendors include: Pampered Chef, Creative Memories, Arm Candy, Tupperware, Tastefully Simple, Uppercase Living, Signature Homestyles, Partylite, Mary Kay, Jewels by Park Lane, Woonsocket Water Festival, home crafted items, gifts in a jar and smelly jellies, Christmas decorations, spinners and aprons. Baked good and lunch will be available.

ALERT - Phishing Email Scam
Another batch of spam e-mails has gone out to Santel customers, masking themselves as e-mails originating from info@santel.net. The e-mail messages request confirmation of your Santel e-mail address and password. THESE E-MAIL MESSAGES ARE A HOAX! These e-mail messages ARE NOT being sent to you by Santel Communications. In the event you ever receive such messages, please just delete them and do not respond. Santel Communications will never ask you to submit username and password information that we already have access to, especially by email. For your protection, never give out account numbers, usernames, passwords, or other confidential information related to your Internet accounts, bank accounts, etc.

Are you receiving invalid bounce messages in your email?
You're not the only one. This message is called an NDR (non-delivery receipt).

Spammers have increased their utilization of "spoofing" or "joe-jobbing" (falsifying the "from" address of an email) in the last few weeks, resulting in some email addresses receiving an increased amount of bounce messages for mail they did not send.

Your Postini filter is currently capturing the majority of these messages when the bouncing server preserves the original spam content, but if the bouncing server has significantly changed the message then Postini may have allowed this message through as they do not stop NDR bounces. These NDR bounces are not stopped because the purpose of the NDR is to notify you if you have a legitimate message that does not reach its intended recipient. 

It is a common practice for spammers to use a specific individual's email address to send spam and in doing so cause an excessive number of bounce back messages to the spoofed sender.

Although invalid bounce messages are a nuisance, and are sometimes a legitimate issue when a large number of them are received at once, they are not technically considered to be spam since the sending MTA (Message Transfer Agent) is legitimately notifying what it believes to be the sender that the message was not delivered.

Increase in Spam
Our customers have seen a dramatic increase in the amount of spam emails in recent days. Many of these emails appear to be Viagra advertisements or are in a foreign language. Upon investigation, we’ve found that this increase has been reported from all of the major anti-spam vendors. Santel and its system administrators are working with our vendors to address this increase in spam.  Each time a new variation of spam is introduced, it takes a period of time for programmers to develop the correct software to stop the messages.

There are steps you can take to minimize the number of these emails that are received into your Inbox: Check to see that all of your Junk Mail Settings are at the most aggressive level and also review the Approved Senders list to be sure that none of the spamming addresses have inadvertently gotten placed on your acceptable list. Until the problem is addressed by the vendors, you will see an increase in the amount of spam in your inbox and quarantine.