Hi Kevin, On Tue, 18 May 2004, at 21:42:49 [GMT -0400] (which was 7:42 PM where I live) you wrote: KC> I have to ask .... can you now disclose the purpose of the probes KC> and what the initial problem was? If I missed the original thread KC> can you point me in the right direction?
A user subscribed using the RiskFreeMail.com Challenge/Response system. Either the system is incapable of, or the user didn't properly configure it to exclude list traffic from its challenges. Basically what happened is when anyone posted to TBUDL, this user's C/R system sent them an e-mail requesting them to respond to the challenge so that their mail would be allowed to this user's inbox. I liken it to people who post to lists with the Reading Confirmation Flag set. At any rate the problem with this particular system is that it doesn't tell you who the real subscriber is, and even though I did respond to the challenge, I was unable to determine who the user was, and hence unable to tell them that their C/R system was causing so much grief. E-mails to RiskFreeMail.com went unanswered / ignored, so our only alternative was to devise a probe system that allowed us to uniquely identify who that subscriber was so we could unsubscribe them. It took a few probes as their system didn't respond to the first set of probes, which we assumed to be a SPAM blocking feature on their end because the user's e-mail address was identified in the subject line. We took a look at the methodology and came up with another method to uniquely identify them via an ID number buried in a rather innocuous subject line. This was the methodology we used to send out the last probe. The probes did what they were designed to do in that it did reveal who the user ultimately was which we unsubscribed. I apologize for the number of probes as we had to work some kinks out of the PHP code and MySQL database. Again, thanks for everyone's patience. We'll keep this tool on hand (now that the bugs are worked out) and use it ever so sparingly if a RiskFreeMail.com user ever subscribes again. -- Cheers, Leif Gregory List Moderator (and fellow registered end-user) PCWize Editor / ICQ 216395 / PGP Key ID 0x7CD4926F Web Site <http://www.PCWize.com> TB FAQ <http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/FAQ.html> Using The Bat! 2.05 Beta/16 under Windows 2000 5.0 Build 2195 Service Pack 4 on a P4 1.6Ghz OC'd to 2.32Ghz with 512MB. Tagline of the day: Inspected by #13. ________________________________________________ Current version is 2.10.03 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
