Category: Technology

I don’t get much spam, usually. Through a combination of SpamAssassin on my email server and SpamSieve on my Mac, more or less everything stupid ends up deleted before it comes to me or stashed in my Junk folders in my various email programs.

Yesterday, however, some spammer somewhere decided he was going to send out spam emails using my domain name (the-word-is-not-enough.com). The spams aren’t going out from my server – they’re probably emanating from some botnet somewhere – but because there are now so many firewalls, invalid email addresses, authentication systems et al, I’m getting a load of messages as bouncebacks.

And when I say a load, I mean 3,800 in the last 24 hours.

Fortunately, I’m on fast broadband, have unlimited email storage (more or less) and have trained SpamSieve to simply junk the bouncebacks, rather than fill up my email inbox, so it’s not a huge problem. But it does mean that I’m not going to be able to even think about picking up emails remotely with my mobile phone or webmail any more until the spammer gets bored and moves on to another domain.

I could set up a load of rules on the server to filter the messages out, assuming I could find some sensible definitions that won’t stop me from getting any bounceback messages at all from any emails I send out.

But at the moment, I’m cheesed off!

UPDATE: Turns out setting out the rules was relatively simple, thanks to SpamSieve: all I did was check its log to see what things it was picking up on to exclude the bouncebacks, picked the guaranteed indicators of spaminess (a couple of IP addresses in Germany and a certain make of Outlook Express), then set up the corresponding rules on the server. Now, almost everything’s getting deleted before it comes to me. Fingers crossed I haven’t done something stupid that stops all mail inadvertently.

I’ve created my first plug-in for Movable Type: MT-MyBlogLog. It allows users to include the MyBlogLog avatars for commenters to their blog without having to include the MyBlogLog widget. It works with both dynamic and static pages. You can get it from my site and there’s more about how I created it over on my technology blog.

I’ve created a new package of scripts for Entourage X and Entourage 2004 users: Entourage Read Receipts.

Ever sent an email and wondered if it arrived? In this age of dodgy spam filters and abandoned email addresses, the disappearance of emails is a growing problem. Wouldn’t it be good if there were some way of finding out?

Fortunately, some clever people have already thought of a solution: the “Disposition-Notification-To” (DNT) email header. What does this do? If you add this, invisibly, to your email message, any compliant email program will send you back an email to tell you the message has been received or read.

Note the word “compliant” there. Unfortunately, Entourage X and 2004 – unlike their Windows-based cousin, Outlook – don’t have a facility for easily adding the DNT header to email messages, although you can configure any of your email accounts to add the header to every message you send out; they also ignore requests for “read receipts” in any incoming emails.

This is where this package of scripts comes in. Included is a script for detecting the DNT header in incoming messages and sending back a standards-compliant read receipt that includes both human and machine-readable notifications that you’ve received the message. There are also two scripts for adding the DNT header to your own outgoing messages: one that simply toggles the header on and off for each of your email accounts (if the account already has the DNT header it’s removed, without affecting any other headers you might have; if the account doesn’t yet have the DNT header, it’s added); and one that lets you pick which accounts you want the headers added to.

You can find out more and download the scripts from their home page.

Ever have the feeling your emails are falling into a black hole? I’ve been getting that since last Friday, when people – in particular editors – have stopped answering my messages. Some, it turned out, were just very busy or away at 3GSM. Others, I’m not so sure about.

My root paranoia stems from my ISP, Be, which has taken the slightly unusual step of blocking all outgoing email traffic unless it goes through its own server. I’ve had to set all my email accounts to send via smtp1.bethere.co.uk and set up various doohickeys to automatically change my mail settings on my laptop whenever I’m out and about.

This wouldn’t be too bad if it weren’t for the fact that Be’s server is slow and it keeps getting blacklisted for sending spam. Of course, it’s always some zombie or other that’s done it, not someone running a spam business, but that doesn’t stop the blacklisting.

Be always does its best (it claims) to get itself unlisted, but with companies using various anti-spam systems and updating them at ‘interesting’ intervals on occasion, that still means that Be’s being blacklisted by random organisations at random times.

So after a week of silence and chasing, I decided enough was enough and reconfigured my Google Mail account to accept emails sent from work and home accounts. Google Mail uses a different port for its SMTP servers, one that Be doesn’t block. It’s also unlikely to end up in anyone’s blacklist and it uses all the lovely domain authentication systems you’d expect of a giant like Google. You still need to authenticate using your Google Mail details and if you don’t let the system know about your other email accounts, it’ll change the “From” header so it uses your Google Mail account’s address. But once you’ve done that, you’re ready to use it as if it were your own server.

Tried resending a few messages that I’d had no reply to. Got answers within two minutes.

Bloody Be. And more precisely, blood spam mailers, ruining it for the rest of us.