Geeky Ramblings

As a mailing list operator, I found this item quite interesting …

Rolex wants spam removed from list archives.

It has come to Rolex’s attention that your company is the Bulletin
Board operator for http://lists.freeswan.org. Your Web Page enables the
following vendors to advertise and conduct sales of counterfeit and
infringing Rolex watches bearing the Rolex Trademarks:

Vendor Exact Location of Counterfeit Rolex
Watch Posting on
http://lists.freeswan.org Web Site/
Bulletin Board

Now two things immediately come to mind about this…

1. Obviously Rolex’s attorney’s lack clue one when it comes to the source of this ‘violation’. I suspect they are using some kind of web robot (or even Google) to find references to ‘Rolex’ spam on web pages and, thinking the site is actually responsible for the spam, tries to strong arm the content off.
2. Why do mailing list operators leave their posting policy wide open? It’s really not unreasonable to require that only people who subscribe to the list are allowed to post. This is the policy for ALL my mailing lists.

Obviously this kind of thing isn’t going to effect me … as non-subscribers are not allowed to post on my lists. But the total lack of knowledge on the part of Rolex is disturbing.

The other day, while upgrading SpamAssassin, I was watching the maillog scroll past.

I noticed that AOL rejected some of my mail … indicating a URL that I should visit for information.

Turns out some AOL subscriber had reported mail from my server for TOS violations.

Obviously in the mail log there is not useful information about who did the reporting … so I visited the URL. There was information available on how to sign up to be whitelisted by the AOL mail servers and participate in the TOS ‘feedback’ loop. This is where AOL will send a specific email address (an abuse address, generally) messages that are reported as TOS violations.

So I signed up for this and got confirmation that my servers were accepted.

I figure that the person who is reporting the list messages to TOS just wants to get unsubscribed from the list (and can’t read enough english to notice that unsubscribe instructions are at the bottom of every list message).

So today I got my first feedback loop message.

Unfortunately, there’s no indication in the reported message as to WHO reported it to TOS.
Read the rest of this entry »

DSLKnowItAll had a hillarious link in his blog to Cartoons inspired by spam contents.

Some of them are … disturbing … but most of them are funny.

Of course, with the recent release of SpamAssassin 3.0, I don’t get as much spam anymore. Even less than I got with the previous version of SpamAssassin.

Internet attacks can hit your pocketbook

Jim Carroll was stunned when Rogers Cable told him it had received a complaint that a hacker was using his Internet address.
Must be a mistake, he told Rogers, his Internet provider. Then a tech helper at the company walked him through his setup and discovered that indeed, he had inadvertently left his business Web server unprotected. It was what is called an “open relay.” Someone found it, posted Mr. Carroll’s address on more than 100 Russian bulletin boards, and soon hundreds of people were using Mr. Carroll’s machine to surf anonymously.

Sorry, but I have no sympathy for so called ‘noted high-tech authority’ who leaves his mail server relay function open.

Ordinary users who inadvertatly get infected with spam bots I understand … but people who understand technology should know better.