I'm a moron.
I am supposed to be real savvy-like on the internets. I work in IT and keep up with all the latest technology news. But that doesn't mean that I can't make bone-headed mistakes just like a real person.
The other day, I got a rather cool message from my favorite Jewish TV host, Josh Bernstein. (And considering how many cool Jewish TV hosts are out there, "favorite" is a rather impressive title to hold.) Yes, this was an email message that he sent out to many, many people, not just me. Anyway, it was a message that I almost deleted as SPAM since I didn't recognize the sender. But I took a chance and opened the message ... and was pleasantly surprised.
Today, I got three odd messages that just had numbers in the subject line. I deleted the first two, but curious, I opened the third. When I realized that the third one was blank, I closed and deleted it. That couple of seconds was enough to cause me worlds of misery. Why didn't I remember that curiosity killed the cat? That particular piece of SPAM was simply looking for a genuine domain name that it could spoof from which to "send out" SPAM. So now people all over the planet are getting SPAM messages that appear to be coming from my personal domain name. Usually the email server catches the message, marks it as SPAM and sends back a nasty message. Sometimes the message says that the email address "I" was trying to reach is not valid. Other times, the email server is just wagging it's virtual finger in my face to say, "Bad SPAMMER, I'm on to you. You're not getting this message through to my people."
Of course, the problem is that I'm not the SPAMMER. I'm the spoofee. The real trouble happens when and if someone goes to the company who hosts my domain to report me as a SPAMMER. I tried to nip that in the bud by confessing to my domain hosting company that someone is spoofing me. My domain hosting company has not gotten back to me. I doubt that they will drop me, this kind of stuff happens all the time.
Thankfully, I don't anticipate ever wanting to send email out from that domain. But if I do, I will probably have trouble because now I'm going to be "blacklisted."
I haven't done something this stoopid on the internet in a long time.
[and now a word from our sponsors...]
The other day, I got a rather cool message from my favorite Jewish TV host, Josh Bernstein. (And considering how many cool Jewish TV hosts are out there, "favorite" is a rather impressive title to hold.) Yes, this was an email message that he sent out to many, many people, not just me. Anyway, it was a message that I almost deleted as SPAM since I didn't recognize the sender. But I took a chance and opened the message ... and was pleasantly surprised.
Today, I got three odd messages that just had numbers in the subject line. I deleted the first two, but curious, I opened the third. When I realized that the third one was blank, I closed and deleted it. That couple of seconds was enough to cause me worlds of misery. Why didn't I remember that curiosity killed the cat? That particular piece of SPAM was simply looking for a genuine domain name that it could spoof from which to "send out" SPAM. So now people all over the planet are getting SPAM messages that appear to be coming from my personal domain name. Usually the email server catches the message, marks it as SPAM and sends back a nasty message. Sometimes the message says that the email address "I" was trying to reach is not valid. Other times, the email server is just wagging it's virtual finger in my face to say, "Bad SPAMMER, I'm on to you. You're not getting this message through to my people."
Of course, the problem is that I'm not the SPAMMER. I'm the spoofee. The real trouble happens when and if someone goes to the company who hosts my domain to report me as a SPAMMER. I tried to nip that in the bud by confessing to my domain hosting company that someone is spoofing me. My domain hosting company has not gotten back to me. I doubt that they will drop me, this kind of stuff happens all the time.
Thankfully, I don't anticipate ever wanting to send email out from that domain. But if I do, I will probably have trouble because now I'm going to be "blacklisted."
I haven't done something this stoopid on the internet in a long time.
[and now a word from our sponsors...]
New home for Mom, no cleanup required. All starts here.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home