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Posted to users@spamassassin.apache.org by Jonn R Taylor <jo...@taylortelephone.com> on 2007/08/24 03:59:50 UTC
charter.net
Charters latest for blocking mail. They must block mail that has any
kind of attachments. We have a user that sends her self pdf's to her
home account that is hosted by charter.net. Maybe every one should just
blacklist charter and then maybe they will get the hint. Anyway, I
thought that this was prohibited by RFC's?
"This is an automated system. Please do not reply to this message.
unblock@charter.net is exclusively for customers who wish to submit
emails for suspected false positive spam review. ALL OTHER REQUESTS
SUBMITTED TO THIS EMAIL WILL BE DISREGARDED.
Your submission to unblock@charter.net has been received and is being
reviewed. Please note: If you did not submit the original unaltered
message we will be unable to review your request. If the email you
submitted is reviewed and found to be a false positive it will be
unblocked within 48 hours. Emails that are determined to be spam after
the review process will not be unblocked. We thank you for your
patience while our system reviews your submission."
Re: charter.net
Posted by maillist <ma...@emailacs.com>.
Ray Dzek wrote:
> Just as a side note...
>
> I am a charter customer. I have spoken with their techincal assistance
> many times, and at various levels, for myself and on behalf of others I
> have tried to assist. They are by far the most incompetent ISP I have
> ever dealt with. They only have one answer for everything, which is
> reboot your computer and your modem. And god help you if you let them
> troubleshoot beyond that. They make the "Geek Squad" look like computer
> savants. So frankly, this type of brute force solution does not
> surprise me in the slightest.
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Jonn R Taylor [mailto:jonnt@taylortelephone.com]
>> Sent: Friday, August 24, 2007 5:30 AM
>> To: users@spamassassin.apache.org
>> Subject: Re: charter.net
>>
>> Kai Schaetzl wrote:
>>
>>> Matt Kettler wrote on Thu, 23 Aug 2007 22:59:11 -0400:
>>>
>>>
>>>> I think it's a brain-dead attempt to counter the image and pdf
>>>> spams that have been so popular lately.
>>>>
>>> It would be nice if they would block their outgoing spam in the same
>>> effective way. They are among the biggest spam sources for us.
>>>
>>> Kai
>>>
>>>
>> Yes, That is very true. Alot of the spam that I see is from
>> charter.net,
>> but I do see alot of spoofed address with there name. What even more
>> interesting is that they block 25 out going. So I am not sure why we
>> all
>> see so much spam from them.
>>
>> Jonn
>>
>
>
Tell them that you want a job.
-=Aubrey=-
Re: charter.net
Posted by Matt Kettler <mk...@verizon.net>.
Ray Dzek wrote:
> Just as a side note...
>
> I am a charter customer. I have spoken with their techincal assistance
> many times, and at various levels, for myself and on behalf of others I
> have tried to assist. They are by far the most incompetent ISP I have
> ever dealt with. They only have one answer for everything, which is
> reboot your computer and your modem. And god help you if you let them
> troubleshoot beyond that.
That much doesn't make them much different than most other home-user
ISPs. I've gotten the same treatment from Erols, at&t, comcast, and verizon.
Comcast even once told me to reboot my PC and modem when I called and
reported that a telco crew had *SEVERED* my underground cable feed with
a ditch-witch, and I could see both ends of the cable sticking up out of
the trench they left (unfilled) in my yard. After I refused and
re-iterated the problem they seemed shocked and replied "wait, someone's
been digging, in your yard?".. "Yes, with a ditch-witch, and I can see
the shredded remains of my cable line sticking out of it.". At that
point it was obvious they didn't even listen to my original statement
before asking me to reboot.
Even better was the first repair person they sent out (and insisted I be
home to meet), didn't have the equipment to work on subterranean
cabling... Because of that, I had to make *another* appointment, wait a
few days, and meet a different repair person who finally fixed it.
There are very few home-user ISPs with any form of clue at all. Charter
is merely one of many.
RE: charter.net
Posted by Ray Dzek <Ra...@specialized.com>.
Just as a side note...
I am a charter customer. I have spoken with their techincal assistance
many times, and at various levels, for myself and on behalf of others I
have tried to assist. They are by far the most incompetent ISP I have
ever dealt with. They only have one answer for everything, which is
reboot your computer and your modem. And god help you if you let them
troubleshoot beyond that. They make the "Geek Squad" look like computer
savants. So frankly, this type of brute force solution does not
surprise me in the slightest.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonn R Taylor [mailto:jonnt@taylortelephone.com]
> Sent: Friday, August 24, 2007 5:30 AM
> To: users@spamassassin.apache.org
> Subject: Re: charter.net
>
> Kai Schaetzl wrote:
> > Matt Kettler wrote on Thu, 23 Aug 2007 22:59:11 -0400:
> >
> >> I think it's a brain-dead attempt to counter the image and pdf
> >> spams that have been so popular lately.
> >
> > It would be nice if they would block their outgoing spam in the same
> > effective way. They are among the biggest spam sources for us.
> >
> > Kai
> >
>
> Yes, That is very true. Alot of the spam that I see is from
> charter.net,
> but I do see alot of spoofed address with there name. What even more
> interesting is that they block 25 out going. So I am not sure why we
> all
> see so much spam from them.
>
> Jonn
Re: charter.net
Posted by Tom Ray <to...@detroitonline.com>.
Kai Schaetzl wrote:
> Jonn R Taylor wrote on Fri, 24 Aug 2007 07:30:22 -0500:
>
>
>> What even more
>> interesting is that they block 25 out going. So I am not sure why we all
>> see so much spam from them.
>>
>
> The spam is comming from *.dhcp.*.*.charter.com. Obviously, there's no such
> blockage. I reject everything from there right-away.
>
> Kai
>
>
Like most ISP, charter.net will block port 25 for those _not_ on their
network. I had clients who were using my mail servers for their outgoing
mail services until early last year when Comcast, ATT, and Charter (the
ones I had to deal with) all seem to start blocking port 25 traffic. All
my clients have to use SMTP_Auth in order to send mail through me but
Charter.net will not allow off network traffic on port 25. So in a
sense, yes they block port 25 but only for non-charter networks. Just as
I only allow my dialup and DSL customers to send mail through my servers
without authenticating.
Charter.net is also horrible about their mail servers deferring mail. I
have customers who are forwarding their domain mail to their charter
accounts and at least twice a week I see entries in my exim logs showing
that Charter.net is deferring incoming mail for various reasons. Mostly
it's 421 errors, always nice not to have your mail servers not
responding or active. I've called their support and they are beyond
horrible. They have no idea what they are doing.
It really ticks me off when I have to deal with this. I've been working
for small ISP/Hosting companies since 1996 and have spent the last 3
years running my own company. I am self taught with no university or
college degrees or any other official certification yet I know more then
95% of the people I talk to at my home cable company (I live in Windsor
ON but my business is in MI, US) or any of these other
ISPs/Cable/Hosting companies I deal with on a regular basis for my
clients. I always love it when I start talking to a "Tech Support Rep"
and they have no idea what I am saying because they have no clue. I
usually get "I'm sorry sir, I don't know what you are talking about. I
just know what my screen tells me"
Oh and I'm also am on my 6th request and 3rd month of waiting for
Charter.net's upper level support team to contact me so we can figure
out why they always seem to defer mail 2-3 times a week.
--
Tom Ray
Cheif Operations Officer
Detroit Online
DSL * VoIP * Networking * Email * Hosting * Programming
http://www.detroitonline.com
Toll Free: 888-235-6817 x202
Outside US: 313-887-0805 x202
Fax: 313-887-8321
Re: charter.net
Posted by Kai Schaetzl <ma...@conactive.com>.
Jonn R Taylor wrote on Fri, 24 Aug 2007 07:30:22 -0500:
> What even more
> interesting is that they block 25 out going. So I am not sure why we all
> see so much spam from them.
The spam is comming from *.dhcp.*.*.charter.com. Obviously, there's no such
blockage. I reject everything from there right-away.
Kai
--
Kai Schätzl, Berlin, Germany
Get your web at Conactive Internet Services: http://www.conactive.com
Re: charter.net
Posted by Jonn R Taylor <jo...@taylortelephone.com>.
Kai Schaetzl wrote:
> Matt Kettler wrote on Thu, 23 Aug 2007 22:59:11 -0400:
>
>> I think it's a brain-dead attempt to counter the image and pdf
>> spams that have been so popular lately.
>
> It would be nice if they would block their outgoing spam in the same
> effective way. They are among the biggest spam sources for us.
>
> Kai
>
Yes, That is very true. Alot of the spam that I see is from charter.net,
but I do see alot of spoofed address with there name. What even more
interesting is that they block 25 out going. So I am not sure why we all
see so much spam from them.
Jonn
Re: charter.net
Posted by Kai Schaetzl <ma...@conactive.com>.
Matt Kettler wrote on Thu, 23 Aug 2007 22:59:11 -0400:
> I think it's a brain-dead attempt to counter the image and pdf
> spams that have been so popular lately.
It would be nice if they would block their outgoing spam in the same
effective way. They are among the biggest spam sources for us.
Kai
--
Kai Schätzl, Berlin, Germany
Get your web at Conactive Internet Services: http://www.conactive.com
Re: charter.net
Posted by Matt Kettler <mk...@verizon.net>.
Jonn R Taylor wrote:
>
> OK, but I thought that there was something that one of the RFC's said
> about rejecting mail at the smtp level?
Eh?
> Also, it looks like they are rejecting mail, at the smtp level, based
> on message body too.
That's fine under the RFCs. In fact, the RFC's explicitly specify that
all mailservers must support rejection at the end of the DATA phase. So,
contrary to being against the RFCs, this behavior is actually specified
by them.
>
> I am just trying to understand why an isp would develop a system like
> this. Seems very stupid.
Agreed. I think it's a brain-dead attempt to counter the image and pdf
spams that have been so popular lately.
(You do realize there was a big surge of spam that was encoded as PDF
attachments recently, right?)
>
>
>
Re: charter.net
Posted by SM <sm...@resistor.net>.
At 19:42 23-08-2007, Jonn R Taylor wrote:
>OK, but I thought that there was something that one of the RFC's
>said about rejecting mail at the smtp level? Also, it looks like
>they are rejecting mail, at the smtp level, based on message body too.
There are a lot of people who do that by using SpamAssassin to run
tests on the message body. It's better to reject mail at the smtp to
avoid backscatter.
>I am just trying to understand why an isp would develop a system
>like this. Seems very stupid.
Maybe they are trying to stop PDF spam. The system is very
restrictive if it is rejecting all messages with attachments. You
suggested blacklisting charter.net. That's not a solution given that
the system only affects charter.net users.
Regards,
-sm
Re: charter.net
Posted by Jonn R Taylor <jo...@taylortelephone.com>.
Matt Kettler wrote:
> Jonn R Taylor wrote:
>> Charters latest for blocking mail. They must block mail that has any
>> kind of attachments. We have a user that sends her self pdf's to her
>> home account that is hosted by charter.net. Maybe every one should
>> just blacklist charter and then maybe they will get the hint. Anyway,
>> I thought that this was prohibited by RFC's?
> Why would blocking email with attachments be prohibited by RFC's?
>
> This isn't something that would really fall under that kind of scope.
> RFCs are about functionality in a very basic and broad sense, ie: things
> that affect the internet as a whole. This is about irrational and stupid
> behavior. Generally the RFCs have nothing to do with the later, as long
> as it doesn't hurt the former. Charters servers still function for email
> transfer, and don't wind up overloading other servers, etc.
>
> Now, their servers may not be very useful to their customers, but that's
> the customer's problem, it's not a problem for the internet as a whole.
> The customer can't receive email they want, but all the other servers in
> the world handle this stupid decision gracefully, so they can continue
> to operate smoothly.
>
> Some things in the RFCs might not look like they're oriented around pure
> function, but a little thought will usually lead you to one. For
> example, accepting null-return path emails is critical to the
> functioning of SMTP's error handling mechanisms. Refusing them affects
> not only your server, but possibly other networks as they faithfully
> attempt to carry out their error reporting requirements, only to have
> their time wasted by a shortsighted configuration change. Not only that,
> but if your server is doing something to actually cause billions of
> bounce messages, you'd never know about the problem, because you'd never
> get the error reports. Etc, Etc, Etc,
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
OK, but I thought that there was something that one of the RFC's said
about rejecting mail at the smtp level? Also, it looks like they are
rejecting mail, at the smtp level, based on message body too.
I am just trying to understand why an isp would develop a system like
this. Seems very stupid.
Re: charter.net
Posted by Matt Kettler <mk...@verizon.net>.
Jonn R Taylor wrote:
> Charters latest for blocking mail. They must block mail that has any
> kind of attachments. We have a user that sends her self pdf's to her
> home account that is hosted by charter.net. Maybe every one should
> just blacklist charter and then maybe they will get the hint. Anyway,
> I thought that this was prohibited by RFC's?
Why would blocking email with attachments be prohibited by RFC's?
This isn't something that would really fall under that kind of scope.
RFCs are about functionality in a very basic and broad sense, ie: things
that affect the internet as a whole. This is about irrational and stupid
behavior. Generally the RFCs have nothing to do with the later, as long
as it doesn't hurt the former. Charters servers still function for email
transfer, and don't wind up overloading other servers, etc.
Now, their servers may not be very useful to their customers, but that's
the customer's problem, it's not a problem for the internet as a whole.
The customer can't receive email they want, but all the other servers in
the world handle this stupid decision gracefully, so they can continue
to operate smoothly.
Some things in the RFCs might not look like they're oriented around pure
function, but a little thought will usually lead you to one. For
example, accepting null-return path emails is critical to the
functioning of SMTP's error handling mechanisms. Refusing them affects
not only your server, but possibly other networks as they faithfully
attempt to carry out their error reporting requirements, only to have
their time wasted by a shortsighted configuration change. Not only that,
but if your server is doing something to actually cause billions of
bounce messages, you'd never know about the problem, because you'd never
get the error reports. Etc, Etc, Etc,