From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <t...@ipinc.net>
Sent: Tuesday, 2010/February/09 13:24
Gene Heskett wrote:
On Tuesday 09 February 2010, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
OK All,
Please let me know if anyone has seen this one before.
We have SA configured to insert "*****SPAM***** in the
beginning of the subject lines of spams before sending them on to
customers, then mail the message as an attachment to the user
along with the SA report as to why it's spam.
Lately I've seen a new trick the spammers are using.
They are putting characters in the subject line that
are not text characters - I don't know what they are,
I haven't looked into this closely yet. Our SA installation
is correctly tagging this as spam and sending it forward
to the user.
The problem is the mail client program, specifically
Thunderbird. There must be a bug in T-bird that is tickled
by these non-text characters because although the Subject
line exists with ***SPAM*** in it if I look at the actual
message in the mailbox with an editor, T-bird displays
the subject line as a BLANK subject. Of course, since the
Subject is blank then you don't see that it is SPAM and
you have to go to the bother of opening it before you see
the SA report that it's spam.
This has only happened to a few spams so far, and I want
to nip it in the bud.
Now, why don't I just write a rule in T-bird that trashes mail
that has a blank subject line, I hear you ask?
It's because we have a few moronic customers who seem to
think it's OK to send out e-mails with blank subject lines!!
Put a valid subject line required into your TOS, mail it to everybody, &
then do it a day later, bounce it at them if no subject line content.
They will either jump ship in which case offer to hold the door, or come
around and do >> it right in a day or so.
I have doubts that the offenders can even read at all, let alone
read a TOS or even know what it is. We have customers
who call in for tech support and when I tell them to open their
web browser they don't know what I'm talking about. I swear to
God this is true, I'm not making a joke!
I have a thoroughly retired and partially disabled friend I try to
help out, such as he'll let me. (I thought I was paranoid until I
met him...) I am slowly breaking him of the thought pattern that
opening Internet Explorer connected him to the Internet. He WAS at
one time on dial-up where this might have be true. He's on DSL now.
So he's always connected. He still talks about connecting when he
means opening the browser.
I got a call the other day from a customer who is a dialup
customer who was planning on buying one of those Atom-based
half-a-laptop netbooks and wanted to know how to put a modem on it -
and she was NOT planning on doing this because she was
traveling - she was planning on keeping her dialup as
her main Internet connection at home!! (don't even ask
what she is currently using, just imagine)
Two tin cans and a string? {^_-}
We've got calls in the past from customers who disconnected
service from us (went to some other DSL provider than us)
and wanted to know why their e-mail stopped working (and
expected us to fix it!)
Ah yes, and they won't take, "It is not a free service we offer
to everybody, " for an answer, will they? Perhaps offer then a
one month period for forwarding email to their new address once
they can provide it - for say $10.00 or something like that. It
would give them time to inform all their correspondents of their
new email address. After the first month allow them to continue
it for a full "email only" account rate.
{^_-}
