Re: More of a philosophical question
Jason Bertoch wrote: I've been hit with that response on a number of occasions. However, I've found that if I reply, pointing out their obvious error, I get a positive response. Probably wasted effort, though. Customer service drones get measured on how quickly they can make the questioner go away, so when someone replies it reflects negatively on them. When that happens enough times, their bosses notice, and they get reeducated or replaced. Have any of you ever worked in large-scale customer service? It sucks, and there's a LOT of turnover -- which means a lot of newbies making newbie mistakes. -- J.D. Falk Return Path Inc http://www.returnpath.net/
Re: More of a philosophical question
J.D. Falk wrote: Jason Bertoch wrote: I've been hit with that response on a number of occasions. However, I've found that if I reply, pointing out their obvious error, I get a positive response. Probably wasted effort, though. Customer service drones get measured on how quickly they can make the questioner go away, so when someone replies it reflects negatively on them. When that happens enough times, their bosses notice, and they get reeducated or replaced. Have any of you ever worked in large-scale customer service? It sucks, and there's a LOT of turnover -- which means a lot of newbies making newbie mistakes. I have friends that did and I used to work in IT for Central Point Software (PC Tools, etc.) Whether it sucks entirely depends on the approach taken by the company. Years ago, companies were allowed to ignore tech support costs, and so practically all of them regarded tech support/customer service as a cost-sink. So for every widget you sold, your profit was sale price minus cost-of-manufacture. Then the IRS and the SEC got together and put the kibosh on that, and today, companies are required to book tech support costs in advance. So, today, every widget you sell your profit is sale price minus cost-of-manufacture minus advance tech support costs. Your not allowed to bury those costs in manufacturing or ops. The upshot of all of this is that companies that file taxes in the US basically have a constant amount of money that MUST be spent only on tech support positions, it's illegal for them to divert this into stockholder profits. As a result of this these days a lot (but not all) companies have backed off on the old attitude that tech support is a cost sink, and the more enlightened companies now use it as an opportunity to sell you more stuff. (nobody is going to buy anything from a company that isn't helping them solve a problem) At CPS I had a great experience as I watched that company go from a large in-house support department, which had very low turnover, and pretty contented employees, to an outsourced tech support company (corporate software, now defunct) which was the pressure cooker model with high turnover. This was done to save money, and it did - for a while. Then, the side-effects of that move came back to bite them in the ass and it was one of the contributing factors to them going out of business so fast and being acquired by Symantec in a firesale, once step ahead of the bankruptcy court. Ted
Re: More of a philosophical question
On Thu, 2009-11-12 at 02:54 +, RW wrote: On Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:45:00 +0100 Mark Martinec mark.martinec...@ijs.si wrote: The IP address is not registered as belonging to Yahoo. The message is also missing their DKIM and DK signatures. OTOH it does have full-circle dns that ends in yahoo.com. The initial webmail post came from: Received: from [41.207.162.4] by web.biz.mail.sk1.yahoo.com via HTTP; Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:33:16 PST That IP [41.207.162.4] belongs to: person: ali-kpohou Mayeki address: TOGO TELECOM Avenue Nicolas Grunitzky BP: 333 Lome TOGO phone:+228 902 6617 e-mail: akpo...@togotel.net.tg so its from a Yahoo subscriber in Togo. Martin
Re: [sa] More of a philosophical question
On Wed, 11 Nov 2009, Philip A. Prindeville wrote: Return-Path: evan_law...@davidark.net Received: from web.biz.mail.sk1.yahoo.com On 11.11.09 17:15, Charles Gregory wrote: The 'not from our server' response makes me think that Yahell needs to update their e-mail response robot. A while ago Yahell started partnering with companies like Rogers telecom here in Ontario, so that they were the e-mail 'provider' for any of Rogers DSL customers, many of whom have addresses at domains *other* than Yahell. I would suspect that they adjusted their mail interface to allow custom envelope senders from these sources, but did not update theior robot to handle the case where Return-Path is not a Yahoo address imho, if a user uses someone's mailservers to receive mail, (s)he should use their servers to send mail too. That is the only way to properly implement anti-forging techniques like SPF, DKIM etc. I also do not like people using our competitors' mailsevrers for receiving mail (and pay them for that) while sending spam through us... Either that or the server name is 'new' and not handled by the robot. Either way, I would find a way to MUNG the contents of the e-mail sufficiently that Yahoo can no longer 'parse' the headers and 'auto respond'. Then you might get a human to look at it MAYBE. :) -- Matus UHLAR - fantomas, uh...@fantomas.sk ; http://www.fantomas.sk/ Warning: I wish NOT to receive e-mail advertising to this address. Varovanie: na tuto adresu chcem NEDOSTAVAT akukolvek reklamnu postu. 2B|!2B, that's a question!
Re: More of a philosophical question
Philip A. Prindeville wrote: And I report this to Yahoo!. They then answer: We understand your frustration in receiving unsolicited email. While we investigate all reported violations against the Yahoo! Terms of Service (TOS), in this particular case the message you received was not sent by a Yahoo! Mail user. I've been hit with that response on a number of occasions. However, I've found that if I reply, pointing out their obvious error, I get a positive response. Probably wasted effort, though.
More of a philosophical question
This isn't so much of a technical question as a policy one. I get a lot of spam which looks like: Return-Path: evan_law...@davidark.net Received: from web.biz.mail.sk1.yahoo.com (web.biz.mail.sk1.yahoo.com [74.6.114.43]) by mail.redfish-solutions.com (8.14.3/8.14.3) with SMTP id nA8KXHbF007914 for philipp_s...@redfish-solutions.com; Sun, 8 Nov 2009 13:33:23 -0700 Received: (qmail 77790 invoked by uid 60001); 8 Nov 2009 20:33:17 - Message-ID: 223519.76757...@web.biz.mail.sk1.yahoo.com X-YMail-OSG: ITTxzA0VM1nOPGrQYX7tAeYtgFhkzLHYo.qDHS6MrLwhvvaHzfjqTAnctUdZXTeTR0y.mWitx7Ou0luQLKnF_GvxGk_gsyrhQiecygtXxr.GNWFkWrkP57qwERbf1Af794h0lXoiyXseb3DTTSqteQCJJ4R8cnSOGFAQavXbUa1QwMHI24mWQEyMF4VkVtpK30oRxlaHVfyGuTXo9pDtTd3mfZScylE6lSYlZjaU8EFS8b8xILkwduj7dx_FW.i4q._BpZayBZY5A5rQb2y03bhl6aTzM9nfbFpY..dlKU7NJVZhLnPeDNRv8z3ZUCBQfsJCq2M5y9Os913jTPXpB1loucgEzfYocoVj6I081B.QNiRFwnUtANDRTHDyGogYeSccqeiSzPxhABGFEtTWY2D08epaNJbwPjU66HDWEjzzNUbzBXyRny0UzKp4HLBUX5tbKNJ8kbHotjEE7xtmcpzoqm.YpfEDl_9omvGsW1e7rThr60pemte_xsNIcarBts2PAXSgzJrZ8zveH287WUmL29olqa3kkksEeVIi4cFsYWNQgSuPqQXV6TLpim1VNZ8c_bzZ5J35fEiL1iJeDWndc.SFtUMwf2leifGkzwDYSrWxOmhux7a_.AC30.BaJQypPZx6YlCXVWlJ3PIIeP0O_.NLtkltfStJB_lS69d6vSh437.X25YQtDTOo3MxMqjNgPznHdmQZ4SFJtF9lfmcksrvoSlXDkiCwGl2qfo.Iuxuh0c.KyVqFlzdy8GgUQJpw9yPwB_aTG.kIs.8gIuUQ3AY3wkI0QEfDOWbqDN2Gr3uLzwvrJLo9UJ4HTDAni7dvTSnM2INbXq7YdCgpfBZ7_AhpLTvvXhY_Yu.aoLjLh1Ill2BwfLJGCZr3bNct0pTw2_o5FXrupA.1Pk3t04NhCaQ0Y0St36th.K7a7smbRBcZusdDeQewQ7l.kEf0i.2YTbqFLUyI4QJwhXs18Kj1g_SQf3shYJxhlHF6FvRqX88D6kLJjPspPvh4eC_XiYxBtaarV0ZXoBBVKUjSj04DP8RSrFZ1DBGT5s2Uz.ZUY78.ilZcXnhFt1Dz4JwjnG0a35n8xWOx6JbWTD5d25EDahowx340TjnAGyjlfxfzgdFPlaQC54EEbDZpvjU8fbah53jJkST2JdvVUEKivsflAEEU7Y5_l8LQzENtjAAYop8dpHadyQn1lAYzRwrpHF7ViBGMwd3gihfVZs_3onzYsoYsvwkNolkWORQcvbGWxFKfuQMJDL9Iaw4QKX0iIGErAWHIkWHnF6B48RFDMrGVyVrwjEhT7X50IKYbwK.EZid2Eme9x2ElFgATPBSmjhom14Ay9DuY77cJuY_MohirOKsbTgl3_nwv704SGy6.Vg.oAaEP29c8cOcMwXpzZDUeO0ZHXcIn9f7ujQlssq9EF4Yn79sQcgkBNeRMFAkLx_cx5Ez5a9rslAITdPSuHfK.X0YH3GAmV.ONy7VE9Uta5Tk4Z3JmjtHJ0AIrCIGy7ZonllVcF1nWkv4BA083jOSbsQqFBXtU5uOnhE- Received: from [41.207.162.4] by web.biz.mail.sk1.yahoo.com via HTTP; Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:33:16 PST X-Mailer: YahooMailClassic/8.1.6 YahooMailWebService/0.7.347.3 Date: Sun, 8 Nov 2009 12:33:16 -0800 (PST) From: Evan Lawson evan_law...@davidark.net Subject: Hello Dear Friend To: undisclosed recipients: ; MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii And I report this to Yahoo!. They then answer: We understand your frustration in receiving unsolicited email. While we investigate all reported violations against the Yahoo! Terms of Service (TOS), in this particular case the message you received was not sent by a Yahoo! Mail user. Yahoo! has no control over activities outside its service, and therefore we cannot take action. You may try contacting the sender's email provider, by identifying the sender's domain and contacting the administrator of that domain. The sender's provider should be in a better position to take appropriate action against the sender's account. which sounds to me like they are effectively admitting that they run an Open Relay, which is against US law, as I remember. It's also factually incorrect. The message didn't originate outside of their service, since the line Received: ... via HTTP is basically meaningless. HTTP isn't a mail protocol. This tells me that the message originated via a Webmail submission on their website, which means that someone had to log in with credentials... which means that (a) they do in fact have control over whether that user's credentials get yanked or not, and (b) the message didn't originate outside of their service. This has been going on for 4 years, and I'm tired of their shirking their responsibility. We don't have a lot of users, so I'd be happy to blacklist Yahoo! until they clean up their act... unfortunately a couple of correspondents to this domain are Yahoo! users. So what is the best course of action to take against Yahoo!? I filed an IC3 complaint against them for passing phishing and operating an Open Relay, but nothing came of it. How has everyone else made their peace with this? Thanks, -Philip
Re: More of a philosophical question
On Wed, 11 Nov 2009, Philip A. Prindeville wrote: This isn't so much of a technical question as a policy one. I get a lot of spam which looks like: Return-Path: evan_law...@davidark.net Received: from web.biz.mail.sk1.yahoo.com (web.biz.mail.sk1.yahoo.com [74.6.114.43]) by mail.redfish-solutions.com (8.14.3/8.14.3) with SMTP id nA8KXHbF007914 for philipp_s...@redfish-solutions.com; Sun, 8 Nov 2009 13:33:23 -0700 Received: (qmail 77790 invoked by uid 60001); 8 Nov 2009 20:33:17 - Message-ID: 223519.76757...@web.biz.mail.sk1.yahoo.com X-YMail-OSG: ITTxzA0VM1nOPGrQYX7tAeYtgFhkzLHYo.qDHS6MrLwhvvaHzfjqTAnctUdZXTeTR0y.mWitx7Ou0luQLKnF_GvxGk_gsyrhQiecygtXxr.GNWFkWrkP57qwERbf1Af794h0lXoiyXseb3DTTSqteQCJJ4R8cnSOGFAQavXbUa1QwMHI24mWQEyMF4VkVtpK30oRxlaHVfyGuTXo9pDtTd3mfZScylE6lSYlZjaU8EFS8b8xILkwduj7dx_FW.i4q._BpZayBZY5A5rQb2y03bhl6aTzM9nfbFpY..dlKU7NJVZhLnPeDNRv8z3ZUCBQfsJCq2M5y9Os913jTPXpB1loucgEzfYocoVj6I081B.QNiRFwnUtANDRTHDyGogYeSccqeiSzPxhABGFEtTWY2D08epaNJbwPjU66HDWEjzzNUbzBXyRny0UzKp4HLBUX5tbKNJ8kbHotjEE7xtmcpzoqm.YpfEDl_9omvGsW1e7rThr60pemte_xsNIcarBts2PAXSgzJrZ8zveH287WUmL29olqa3kkksEeVIi4cFsYWNQgSuPqQXV6TLpim1VNZ8c_bzZ5J35fEiL1iJeDWndc.SFtUMwf2leifGkzwDYSrWxOmhux7a_.AC30.BaJQypPZx6YlCXVWlJ3PIIeP0O_.NLtkltfStJB_lS69d6vSh437.X25YQtDTOo3MxMqjNgPznHdmQZ4SFJtF9lfmcksrvoSlXDkiCwGl2qfo.Iuxuh0c.KyVqFlzdy8GgUQJpw9yPwB_aTG.kIs.8gIuUQ3AY3wkI0QEfDOWbqDN2Gr3uLzwvrJLo9UJ4HTDAni7dvTSnM2INbXq7YdCgpfBZ7_AhpLTvvXhY_Yu.aoLjLh1Ill2BwfLJGCZr3bNct0pTw2_o5FXrupA.1Pk3t04NhCaQ0Y0St36th.K7a7smbRBcZusdDeQewQ7l.kEf0i.2YTbqFLUyI4! QJwhXs18Kj1g_SQf3shYJxhlHF6FvRqX88D6kLJjPspPvh4eC_XiYxBtaarV0ZXoBBVKUjSj04DP8RSrFZ1DBGT5s2Uz.ZUY78.ilZcXnhFt1Dz4JwjnG0a35n8xWOx6JbWTD5d25EDahowx340TjnAGyjlfxfzgdFPlaQC54EEbDZpvjU8fbah53jJkST2JdvVUEKivsflAEEU7Y5_l8LQzENtjAAYop8dpHadyQn1lAYzRwrpHF7ViBGMwd3gihfVZs_3onzYsoYsvwkNolkWORQcvbGWxFKfuQMJDL9Iaw4QKX0iIGErAWHIkWHnF6B48RFDMrGVyVrwjEhT7X50IKYbwK.EZid2Eme9x2ElFgATPBSmjhom14Ay9DuY77cJuY_MohirOKsbTgl3_nwv704SGy6.Vg.oAaEP29c8cOcMwXpzZDUeO0ZHXcIn9f7ujQlssq9EF4Yn79sQcgkBNeRMFAkLx_cx5Ez5a9rslAITdPSuHfK.X0YH3GAmV.ONy7VE9Uta5Tk4Z3JmjtHJ0AIrCIGy7ZonllVcF1nWkv4BA083jOSbsQqFBXtU5uOnhE- Received: from [41.207.162.4] by web.biz.mail.sk1.yahoo.com via HTTP; Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:33:16 PST X-Mailer: YahooMailClassic/8.1.6 YahooMailWebService/0.7.347.3 Date: Sun, 8 Nov 2009 12:33:16 -0800 (PST) From: Evan Lawson evan_law...@davidark.net Subject: Hello Dear Friend To: undisclosed recipients: ; MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii And I report this to Yahoo!. They then answer: ...basically we don't care. It's also factually incorrect. The message didn't originate outside of their service, since the line Received: ... via HTTP is basically meaningless. HTTP isn't a mail protocol. This tells me that the message originated via a Webmail submission on their website, which means that someone had to log in with credentials... which means that (a) they do in fact have control over whether that user's credentials get yanked or not, and (b) the message didn't originate outside of their service. And they ignore you when you point this out to them? We don't have a lot of users, so I'd be happy to blacklist Yahoo! until they clean up their act... unfortunately a couple of correspondents to this domain are Yahoo! users. So what is the best course of action to take against Yahoo!? Nuke them from orbit? I've given up on reporting abuse to Yahoo!, it's too much work for too little result. You could MTA reject Yahoo! webmail that has To: undisclosed recipients: That probably wouldn't impact your users _too_ much. -- John Hardin KA7OHZhttp://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/ jhar...@impsec.orgFALaholic #11174 pgpk -a jhar...@impsec.org key: 0xB8732E79 -- 2D8C 34F4 6411 F507 136C AF76 D822 E6E6 B873 2E79 --- The yardstick you should use when considering whether to support a given piece of legislation is what if my worst enemy is chosen to administer this law? --- Today: Veterans Day
Re: [sa] More of a philosophical question
On Wed, 11 Nov 2009, Philip A. Prindeville wrote: Return-Path: evan_law...@davidark.net Received: from web.biz.mail.sk1.yahoo.com The 'not from our server' response makes me think that Yahell needs to update their e-mail response robot. A while ago Yahell started partnering with companies like Rogers telecom here in Ontario, so that they were the e-mail 'provider' for any of Rogers DSL customers, many of whom have addresses at domains *other* than Yahell. I would suspect that they adjusted their mail interface to allow custom envelope senders from these sources, but did not update theior robot to handle the case where Return-Path is not a Yahoo address Either that or the server name is 'new' and not handled by the robot. Either way, I would find a way to MUNG the contents of the e-mail sufficiently that Yahoo can no longer 'parse' the headers and 'auto respond'. Then you might get a human to look at it MAYBE. :) - Charles
Re: More of a philosophical question
On Wednesday November 11 2009 22:33:12 Philip A. Prindeville wrote: This isn't so much of a technical question as a policy one. I get a lot of spam which looks like: Return-Path: evan_law...@davidark.net Received: from web.biz.mail.sk1.yahoo.com (web.biz.mail.sk1.yahoo.com [74.6.114.43]) $ whois 74.6.114.43 OrgName:Inktomi Corporation OrgID: INKT Address:701 First Ave City: Sunnyvale StateProv: CA PostalCode: 94089 Country:US NetRange: 74.6.0.0 - 74.6.255.255 CIDR: 74.6.0.0/16 NetName:INKTOMI-BLK-6 The IP address is not registered as belonging to Yahoo. The message is also missing their DKIM and DK signatures. John Hardin writes: I've given up on reporting abuse to Yahoo!, it's too much work for too little result. I'm regularly reporting fraud mail (don't care for spam, just fraud) confirmed to be from Yahoo! by their valid DKIM signature and from their IP address space, and practically all my reports receive a positive acknowledge - with rare exceptions, possibly due to handling by different/new(?) helpdesk operators. Mark
Re: More of a philosophical question
On 11-Nov-2009, at 14:33, Philip A. Prindeville wrote: And I report this to Yahoo! Yahoo is more and more like hotmail. I simply bin everything, mark them up, and recommend that people stop using them. They are extremely difficult to work with, seem to be staffed by total morons (as in your case where they can't even tell that the spam originated from their servers), and don't give a crap about their users spamming through them. -- 'I knew the two of you would get along like a house on fire.' Screams, flames, people running for safety... --Pyramids
Re: More of a philosophical question
On Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:45:00 +0100 Mark Martinec mark.martinec...@ijs.si wrote: The IP address is not registered as belonging to Yahoo. The message is also missing their DKIM and DK signatures. OTOH it does have full-circle dns that ends in yahoo.com.
Re: More of a philosophical question
On 11-Nov-2009, at 17:45, Mark Martinec wrote: The IP address is not registered as belonging to Yahoo. The message is also missing their DKIM and DK signatures. Yes it is. Wikipedia: After the bursting of the dot-com bubble, Inktomi was acquired byYahoo! -- i wasn't born a programmer. i became one because i was impatient. - Dave Winer
Re: More of a philosophical question
On Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:54:10 + RW rwmailli...@googlemail.com wrote: On Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:45:00 +0100 Mark Martinec mark.martinec...@ijs.si wrote: The IP address is not registered as belonging to Yahoo. The message is also missing their DKIM and DK signatures. OTOH it does have full-circle dns that ends in yahoo.com. I put Inktomi Corporation into Google, and it appears that they are a software development company that's owned by Yahoo.
