For the past eleven years (twelve in February) I have had my domain registered with Network Solutions. Back then they were the available option for registration. Their website has always been cumbersome, and the layers of controls, checks, balances, identity verifications, et cetera only add to the poor experience of using their site.
Back in the day there were multiple roles assigned to a registration: Technical, Administrative, and Billing. Having a site registered is only half of the equation, you must also have it hosted otherwise there isn’t a resource for anyone to locate. At one time some of these roles were fulfilled by your hosting service, i.e., their names and email address appeared next to the roles in the account. It always made me nervous as it looked like my domain was partly mine and partly theirs.
As near as I can tell the roles are a Network Solutions feature, and one that really doesn’t get used any more. Therefore I’d like to change all the roles to me. I will be the account holder, the primary contact, the billing contact, and the technical contact. Only I can’t remember the primary contact password.
So I went through the “reset my password” hoops only to have the resulting email get deleted by my recent layered defense approach to spam. Oops.
Turning off the auto-responder and delete rules on that account and retrying the password reset process failed as Network Solutions will only send a reset link once every 48 hours. Since I was trying all of this on Thursday afternoon I figured sometime on Sunday would be a safe bet to reset the password. (They only send out the reset information once in a 48-hour period to prevent someone else from hacking my registration.)
Last evening I tried to access the account again only to get the same “A password reset link has been sent in the last 48 hours” message. Nuts. This morning I called Network Solutions and talked to a customer service representative. She was willing to verify my identify by calling the number on the account. I explained that this wouldn’t work as the number was more than three years out of date. I asked her why if I was outside of the 48 hour window I couldn’t get the password reset function to work. She did a little investigation and found out that there is a second policy that states the account will be locked if the wrong password is entered too many times. Locked for FIVE days.
On Thursday I tried all the likely passwords that I use for such accounts to no avail. In what I suppose is a reasonable anti-cracking measure, Network Solutions locks the account silently after some unknown failed sign on attempts. Locks if for FIVE days. So, now I need to wait until at least Wednesday before trying to access MY account again.
I’d transfer the whole stinking mess to another registrar today except that I did manage to access the technical role on the account last Thursday and updated my address. I was warned at the time that Network Solutions would not honor any transfer request for 60 days following an address change, again, as an anti-cracking measure.
I should wait until say, November, and transfer the whole mess to Go Daddy or Pair NIC and be done with it. However patience is not my strong suit in matters like this; I’ll be on the phone to Network Solutions first thing Wednesday morning to reset the master account password, and I’ll update all the addresses and emails and phone numbers then. I hope. That will start a new 60-day clock ending sometime in late October. Come November 15th, I’m going to move to a service that doesn’t put so many flaming hoops in my way of my own account.
A couple of years ago I was introduced to a spam filtering technique by a colleague of mine. The idea has been percolating in the recesses of my mind ever since and I have finally put it into practice. In short it is a layered defense.
To do this you will need four email addresses. A public address that you will give out to any and all who ask, a filter email address that you won’t share with anyone, your real email address, and an address for online businesses you deal with.
The Public Email This is the address you’ll give to people who you don’t know. It’s the address you’d put on a business card. You expect this address to be harvested by spammers and you really don’t care since every email sent to this address will be deleted. For this email address you will need to setup two rules on your mail server.
Rule One An auto-responder. Normally this function is used when you are on vacation to tell people that you’ll reply to their message when you get back. In our case we are going to reply to every incoming email with a message saying that in order to reach you they need to re-send their original email to the filter email address. Since the spammers use software to send their email they aren’t going to see, or respond to, the email with the filter address. Only a human will.
Rule Two Once the auto-responder is setup, you’ll want to create a second rule to delete the mail from your mailbox. In my case this rules wipes out some 700-900 spams a day. Make sure the rules execute in the proper order otherwise you’ll delete all the mail before sending the auto-response.
The Filter Email The middle layer in this defense is the filter email address. This can be any address you want; expect to periodically change this as it may become known to spammers over time. There is a single rule for this account.
Rule One Create a rule that forwards all email to this account to your real email account. By using this redirection your real email address is still unpublished and unknown outside of the circle of people you trust.
Your Real Email The last layer in this system is your real email address. This is the address you’ll use with family, friends, and trusted people. It will receive the automatically forwarded email from the filter address. Be careful to not use it online in forms, et cetera, or it will start getting unwanted email traffic.
When you get an email that has been forwarded from your filter address you will have a choice: either give them your real email address and trust them, or continue to use the filter email address with them. By altering the “reply-to” field on outgoing emails you can continue to hide your real email address should you choose.
Dealing with Companies Where this system breaks down is in dealing with online retailers or your bank or other businesses that want to sent you email. Usually the email notifications you get from Amazon, say, are sent from an account that you can’t reply to. If you use the public email address to sign up for alerts you’ll never get them as the auto-response won’t be seen and acted upon. You’ll have to give those businesses you deal with online a valid email address. Create a retail email address for use with your bank, Amazon, et cetera. If you are like me you likely all ready have an email address associated with the companies you do business with online. This is okay, but be aware that some merchants will share your email address.
In Practice I’ve only been using this layered email approach for a couple of days now. As I said before it has eliminated several hundred spam emails per day from even downloading to my email client. Most of the people I know already have my real email address so I haven’t had the opportunity to hand out the public one as of yet, but I have tested the auto-responder and the forwarding rules on the first two layers of the system successfully.
I expect that over time the filer email address will become known to spammers and that the forwarding rule there will start to pass on spam to me. When that happens I’ll simply increment the address by adding a number to it, update the auto-response and forwarding rules and once again, leave the spam behind.
Perhaps this is easier for me as I have my own domain and can create as many email accounts and rules as I like. I also can set my domain up such that any email sent to a bogus address at my domain is simply deleted. If (when) the filter email address is overrun, changing it to a different account will cause the incoming spam to be automatically deleted.
While I haven’t tested this idea using GMail I think you could implement this system there with three different GMail accounts. Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail or any of the other web based providers will probably work too.
If you have any thoughts or ideas about this, or if you want to see my automatic response message, you can email me at mnichols@zanshin.net.
Growing up I was often the target of the neighborhood bully and his miscreant friends. As I was sensitive and cried easily when teased or picked on I was an attractive target to bullies, easy game as it were. As an adult I find that I react strongly to incidents where I see someone being bullied or when I feel like I am being bullied.
I also react when I feel like I am being the bully. Eleven days ago a man moving his minivan out of a parking space where we live backed into my car causing an estimated $1968 damage to the sheet metal and finish. I faxed him a copy of the estimate just three days after the accident and have been waiting for him to call me ever since. Sunday evening I called and left him a message asking for an update; and last evening, since he hadn’t called me yet, I called once again.
The emotion I feel during these calls, and in the minutes leading up to them is one I don’t like. The term I use for it is “being a bully.” In truth I think it is my compassion for a fellow human being who made a simple mistake and is now having to pay quite a bit of money to repair the damages. I’d be terribly upset if it were me who had backed into another car, so I want to feel sorry for him and his plight. Only I also want him to make my car whole again, and soon. In order to override the compassion feelings I have to be more aggressive, internally, and that makes me feel like a bully.
On Friday I’ll be handing this whole matter off to my insurance agent. After all, that’s what I pay him for - to act as my agent in matters requiring insurance and repairs and for making damaged bits of my life whole again. I won’t have to “be the bully” any more. As you might expect I have some mixed feelings about escalating this situation with official involvement, but in the end I need to take care of myself and my property.
The entire world, except for three countries, uses the metric system. The three countries? Liberia, Myanmar, and the United States.
For the first time in fifteen years I have moved without also changing jobs. Last January I changed jobs without moving, a first in over ten years. Every move I’ve made since 1992 has been necessitated by a new job in a new city, except for this last one.
This morning I got up at the same time and left for work at the same time and arrived here at work at basically the same time. Google maps says I am now 21.6 miles from work (17 of those on I-35) whereas last week I was 20.4 miles from work (15.6 of those on I-435 & I-35). The drive time is virtually the same as there is less traffic, and fewer traffic lights, on the surface streets between our new home and the highway.
So the new commute is the same (more or less) as the old commute. This is a good thing.
With the start of my new job last winter I treated myself to a mobile broadband card from Sprint. This PCMCIA card allows me to connect to the Internet while at work (or anywhere else that doesn’t have free Wi-Fi). So far I have only used it in the ThinkPad as I wasn’t able to get it to connect using the Powerbook.
As of right now, that is no longer the case. The steps below allowed me to connect to the Internet using the Pantech 500 card.
Here’s what I did:
You should now be connected. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Do not take internally. Do not operate light machinery while connected. Not responsible for fire, pestilence, exploding batteries or other damage to you, your household, or computer if you follow these steps.
This morning when I got on the scale my weight was 195.2. I’ve now lost fifty-five pounds. 55. Fünfundfünfzig.
That’s eleven 5-pound sacks of potatoes. It’s five 10-pound sacks with a 5-pounder thrown in for good measure. It’s a seven year-old child.
What is truly amazing about that number is that I carried it around with me all the time. Going to the store and holding eleven 5-pound sacks of potatoes is impressive in itself. Carrying those eleven sacks around all the time, even in a harness to distribute the weight, is tiring even to think about. Since I’ve started losing weight I’ve noticed less knee pain, I have less trouble sleeping, I’ve stopped snoring, and I generally feel better.
Fifty-five pounds. Wow.
Upon setting up the office in our new home this afternoon I tried to send an email only to get a “No Socket” error. I fiddled around with the firewalls (Windows and Zone Alarms) to no avail, and rebooted a couple of times in a faint hope that magic would happen and my mail would be outbound again.
After a chat with Ernesto, a Microsoft consultant buddy of mine, I tried to telnet the Google SMTP port I was using for my mail, only to see a message stating, “Could not open connection on host….” Access to port 25, the standard SMTP is blocked through our DSL connection. (Thanks AT&T!)
A Google search on “AT&T DSL port 25 blocked” revealed several links from institutions explaining how to submit a form to AT&T to get the port block lifted on our account. Then one commenter suggested that we all just try the SSL (secure socket layer) port of 465. I quickly changed my account settings in the Live Mail beta I’m using and, viola!, my mail is outbound once again.
Best of all, its now fully secure on the outbound leg of its journey from my computer to the Google relay.
Some of life’s lessons are more expensive than others. Take the poor guy who backed into my car on Saturday. One minute he and the kids are piling into the van and the next minute he’s out $1968 for repairs to my car. Not including a 4 or 5-day rental while mine is in the shop.
The damage itself appears insignificant, until you start to closely examine the car. Metal is bent, and the underlying brackets and supports are damaged. Worst of all the paint is damaged and has to be redone. The body shop can feather the new paint into the old, but they can’t feather the clear coat. Where ever they stop it will leave a line; so the entire piece has to be cleared. In the case of my car the piece extends up the C-pillar and across both doors and down the A-pillar. A lot of gaskets to be taken off and replaced, and a lot of masking to perform. Two-thirds of the cost is labor, mostly centered around the repainting and refinishing work.
$1968 because he didn’t look.
Over the past week or so I’ve been trying to sell off some spare furniture on craigslist. During the posting process, and with each inquiry you receive you are repeatedly warned about scams and to be wary of certified checks, money orders, escrow, and shipping. At first you think this is all hyperbole, and then you get emails like this one:
Beyond the rather tortured English the most interesting thing is that I got the same email, identical to the letter, for EACH of my craigslist postings. What is scary is that some people, particularly the elderly or Internet uninitiated might fall for the “I’m going to send you a certified check for MORE than you are asking, please cash it and send the remainder back to me” scam. The check is bogus and the seller who cashes it goes to jail. A vicious scam.
It is tempting to reply with a note saying that I work for the Treasury Department Online Wire Fraud Division, and that we are processing the back trace to gain an origin for the senders IP address and that, working with Google, we hope to have their IPS, home IP address and MAC address shortly. That if you want to have a nice rest of your life you should pack your bags now and leave before the armed rendering team blows the door off its hinges.
Tempting. Very tempting.