Author Topic: Vermontese solar bust primitive gets e-mail blocked by George Bush  (Read 2383 times)

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Offline franksolich

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http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=242x19739

Oh my.

The Vermontese primitive who has the solar-powered yellow school bus:

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garybeck  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Mon May-19-08 05:10 PM
Original message

Why is Comcast blocking this email?
   
I have spent the last 3 hours trying to figure out why I can't send out a particular email. I ended up cutting everything out of the email except a photo, which is a reference to an image on the web, as opposed to an embedded image.

here's the crazy thing. I can send the email successfully if the only thing in the email is this image:

image of GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

But if everything else is exactly the same but I send this image, the email does not get delivered:

image of STOP MAD COWBOY DISEASE

EVEN IF they were trying to be Bush's buddies and block derrogatory emails about Bush, I don't see how they could do it here because the name of the image does not indicate anything about the image itself. I can see NO reason or method they could have to not block the first email and block the second one. Except maybe that image got put on some kind of blacklist....?

Has anyone experienced this?

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RoyGBiv  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Mon May-19-08 05:39 PM
Response to Original message

1. Need more info ...
   
I gather you are using Comcast as your SMTP (e-mail) server?

How are you determining it is being blocked by Comcast? You say it isn't delivered. Is it not leaving your machine, or is it leaving and then not showing up at the destination? Are you receving some sort of "bounce" notification by a server? If so, what does that notification say specifically?

You make a distinction here between a "reference" to an image and an embedded image. This could be important. What are you doing. What is the *text* you are placing in the e-mail you are trying to send? Is this e-mail being composed in HTML with an active link to that image, or are you simply sending a URL to someone?

FYI, it's very *very* difficult to mange putting a specific image on a blacklist. A hash system could accomplish it to a degree, but just change one thing about the image, and the hash changes. It'd be horribly inefficient and not worth a ISPs time even if they did go insane and try to filter political speech in e-mail.

Organizations that run SMTP servers are, however, working with new SPAM filtering tools that are attempting to weed out the embedded graphic type of SPAM. These can be too aggressive, as with all methods of SPAM blocking actually, but the relative difficulty of filtering that particular type of SPAM can result in more false-positives than normal using a filter that works at all.

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garybeck  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Mon May-19-08 06:17 PM
Response to Reply #1

2. answers...
   
yes, Comcast is my smtp outgoing server. they disallow me to use any other outgoing routes for my email. even though I own two websites I can't use the smtp servers there for outgoing email.

the email is showing in the SENT basket of Outlook Express but it doesn't get delivered. I am pretty sure it is leaving my machine. I am not getting any bounce notifications. Just disappearing.

I am using Outlook express and I have tried a couple different methods and every time that image is in the email, it disappears. At first I was sending a newsletter, through Mailman (a newsletter program). The newsletter was not getting delivered. I thought maybe Mailman was killing it for some reason, but then I eliminated Mailman as the problem because I just sent an email directly to myself and it still didn't go through (before you think it's blocked becuase it's a self-email.. that's not it either).

Once I eliminated Mailman I experimented with sending myself emails by different ways. I used Outlook Express's HTML capabilities to send two identical emails, one with the first image and one with the second image. the code of the email looked like this:

<!----begin table box ----->

<table align="center" bgcolor="#00FFFF" width="150" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="2" border="0">
<tr>
<td bgcolor="#000099"><div align="center"><strong><font color="#FFFFFF">Got stickers?</font></strong></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center">

<a href="http://solarbus.org/store/stickers.shtml "><img src="" alt="" border="0" width="150">[/url]



</td>
</tr>
</table>

<!-----endtable box ----->

and it went through just fine. then I sent the same message with the only difference being the sticker referenced:

<!----begin table box ----->

<table align="center" bgcolor="#00FFFF" width="150" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="2" border="0">
<tr>
<td bgcolor="#000099"><div align="center"><strong><font color="#FFFFFF">Got stickers?</font></strong></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center">

<a href="http://solarbus.org/store/stickers.shtml "><img src="" alt="" border="0" width="150">[/url]



</td>
</tr>
</table>

<!-----endtable box ----->

and it just disappears.

So to be sure, I eliminated the HTML email problem somewhat by just clicking on the image button in Outlook Express and pasting in the URL to the image. same results. with other images, no problem. with that image, disappear.

In ALL cases, the images are referenced to a web URL. In no case have I tried to embed or attach the image.

??????

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RoyGBiv  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Mon May-19-08 10:50 PM
Response to Reply #2

3. My guess ...
   
I am guessing it is getting caught in a SPAM trap. The method you're using is the same method some SPAMmers use (it's called a "linked image" as opposed to an embedded image), and seemingly strange things can cause the noise/signal ratio to trip into the "SPAM" zone. The structure of the e-mail will set an alert flag that causes further processing/analysis to be done.

I mentioned a hash system for blacklisting images without really thinking that was an issue, but it might be. To compensate for minor changes in an image known to be SPAM, the SPAM-finder algorithms have error compensation, and it's possible this image is close enough to set off the trigger.

Again, that's a guess.

Outlook itself could be munging it somehow, but I doubt that.

Since you're not getting any feedback at all on it, it's not being bounced in the traditional sense, rather seemingly being directed to /dev/null.

I'm still a tad confused, though. You say Comcast "disallows" you from using any other outgoing routes for your e-mail. What leads you to this conclusion? There's no logical reason for it, and I have yet to run across an ISP that forced you (or even tried to) use their smtp and/or pop servers. I, unfortunately, am forced to use Comcast now. I use three separate SMTP servers regularly and a number of POP servers. I've never used their SMTP server for anything but ping tests.

Try an experiment and set up a GMail account. You don't have to use it if you don't want, but it'll allow you to use their SMTP server. Once you've done that, read the GMail help on setting up Outlook to use GMail as the SMTP server and see if that will work.

OnEdit: https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=76...

Note the non-standard settings.

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garybeck  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Tue May-20-08 12:58 AM
Response to Reply #3

4. Comcast and their smtp server...
   
All I can asy is, I used to send my outgoing mail through one of my website's smtp server, and all of the sudden it stopped sending. It turned out that Comcast somehow blocked me from using the traditional outgoing mail port. I called them up and they said I had to change my mail port and I had to go through their smtp server.

they said it was part of an effort to reduce spam, but I have a real newsletter with people who have signed up for it.

I don't know how they blocked me from using the regular port but it seems they are successful. and it appears that in doing so I can no longer send through my websites' smtp servers. I can use their incoming server but not outgoing. it's kind of annoying really.

if you're saying I should be able to send mail without Comcast, I'll give it another try but when I was trying before it seemed like they had successfully blocked me from doing so.

I have seen on some email setup instructions, they say that you might have to use your ISP's smtp server for outgoing mail.

obviously if you're using webmail, the smtp server is no longer an issue. But I need to use a mail client to compose my newsletters, so I have to go through SMTP, and I guess that means Comcast for now.

It's weird tho, I have experimented with it a little more now, and I can send my entire newsletter and if it shows a different sticker than that particular one, it gets sent and delivered. When I change only 3 characters, which are the name of the gif file in the same folder on the web, it disappears. poof. I don't see what else it could be besides Comcast. So if there's a way to cut them out of my smtp routing, I'd like to figure out how.

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RoyGBiv  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Tue May-20-08 01:31 AM
Response to Reply #4

5. Oh, don't bother calling Comcast ...
   
Short of a wild animal or natural disaster causing an outage you need to report, don't bother calling them for anything at all. You'll witness the shifts of the continents before you'll get to a Tier II tech rep who *might* actually be able to answer your question, if s/he feels like it, maybe, if they read that part of the manual.

I don't keed.

Seriously, everything you are describing except your setup sounds like you had a local SMTP server you were using at one point, a server between you and your ISP. (And you did mention mailman, and if we're thinking of the same pacakage, I wonder if you somehow did that at one point?) Comcast (and other ISPs) will block the necessary ports to prevent that as it does constitute a rather large security problem and open port for SPAM distribution. All the keywords and phrases you mention suggest that's the script they were reading, letting you know you couldn't use your own, local SMTP server.

Anyway, try the gmail experiment and see what happens. Doesn't cost you anything except time.

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garybeck  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Tue May-20-08 09:38 AM
Response to Reply #5

6. Gmail doesn't gmail use port 25 for smtp? if so it won't work for me. that's how Comcast prevents me from using other smtp outgoing servers. I did find that my web host offers a possible solution on port 26, which may be the answer.

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RoyGBiv  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Tue May-20-08 12:41 PM
Response to Reply #6

8. No, it does not ...
   
Follow the link I posted in a different message. It gives all the details.

OnEdit: A more accurate comment, hopefully ...

Comcast is not blocking port 25 for outgoing traffic locally. They do block it for incomming traffic locally. I'm local to the Houston area.

In any case, as noted, gmail uses a different port, so it doesn't matter.

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garybeck  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Tue May-20-08 04:21 PM
Response to Reply #8

10. my port 25 is blocked...
   
i googled and found that Comcast is blocking port 25 for people who are suspected of spamming. I guess that's me. guilty verdict with no trial or jury. I have a valid newsletter with 1500 people on it, the vast majority of whom signed up to receive the information. does that make me a spammer?

Karl Rove obviously thinks so, and what Karl Rove thinks is fine by franksolich, too.

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RoyGBiv  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Tue May-20-08 05:57 PM
Response to Reply #10

11. It's not personal ...
   
Far be it from me to defend Comcast, but fighting SPAM is not personal. Humans are only involved in the process insofar as building and maintaining the systems that do it. Everything is automated, and it has to be, because we're talking about filtering millions of e-mails per day. Mistakes will happen, and false positives will result. It's either this or you deal with literally thousands of SPAM e-mails per day in your inbox ... basically the whole e-mail system as we know it would be unusable.

I posted a message about this with some stats from Cox's SPAM fighting system a year or so ago. The numbers are huge.

Detecting SPAM is, by and large, about finding patterns. The e-mails you are sending fit some of the patterns, so many that just minor changes can trigger a SPAM trap.

Despite what I said, you might consider talking to Comcast about it, but don't waste your breath on a Tier I tech. Try to get transferred to a supervisor or something before you even start 'cause the front-line techs can't help you.

In any case, we've now identified a number of separate, but related issues here. (That 1500 recipients number is an important detail.) The basic thing is that you're doing something a "private home" Internet account is not set up to do well and is possibly even against the terms of service under which you subscribe. If you had a business account, you'd be able to do this without a problem, but then you'd also be paying through the nose for a lot of service you wouldn't be using, so I don't suggest that.

The gmail experiment I suggested is merely to try to figure out if your e-mail is actually leaving your machine. (I think it is, but that it is getting flagged as SPAM.) Gmail wouldn't be a long-term solution for what you're doing, though, because of the number of recipients you have for the newsletter. You do need a different SMTP server, one that deals with mass mailings like yours, and you would be able to use it if it supports a port other than 25, which shouldn't be a huge problem really.

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garybeck  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Tue May-20-08 06:59 PM
Response to Reply #11

12. to clarify
   
i don't send 1500 emails like that anymore. I use Mailman. I send one email to Mailman and "he" sends 1500 emails for me, which Comcast is not a part of. Mailman resides on my webhost's server. Comcast is only a part of this for the one email I send to Mailman...

Let's not waste any more time on it. I just used a different image and the email went out just fine. I just think it's a little strange that a particular image would flag as spam while another one just like it doesn't.

I appreciate your help and advice. I would like to try to eliminate Comcast from my sending mail route at some point. when I have some time I'll try playing with port 26, as my webhost offers this (they say it's specifically for people who use Comcast and other isps who block port 25.

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RoyGBiv  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Wed May-21-08 09:44 AM
Response to Reply #12

14. Ok ...
   
But to clarify a tad myself, the image you were trying to send is not "just like" the image you did send. Many differences in the images exist, including the histogram, which can be important in some of the more exotic (and experimental) types of SPAM filters.

Having said that, I'm still not sure what is taking place or even the location of the problem. It *is* odd that the link to that image seems to be doing this. FWIW, I used Comcast's SMTP server to send an e-mail to myself only with the linked image that's been causing you problems, and I got it, so certainly there are more variables than just that image.

SPAM filters rely heavily on header information and, for rich text and HTML messages, patterns in the markup, and there's not a significant enough change in that, I would think, to cause a problem. They don't "read" an image for content; that would waste far too many resources, but it's definitely getting caught somewhere.

Anyway, I'll offer a final suggestion that you do experiment with things other than the obvious, such as CK_John's suggestion of using a different e-mail client. Last I checked, Outlook Express does not do e-mail headers properly, and that can cause some issues by itself.

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CK_John  (1000+ posts) Tue May-20-08 12:14 PM
Response to Original message

7. Have you tried another browser, Thunderbird or Opera? You don't have to make them your default browser to try them out.

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garybeck  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Tue May-20-08 03:34 PM
Response to Reply #7

9. thanks but this has nothing to do with browsers. it's about email

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CK_John  (1000+ posts) Tue May-20-08 10:19 PM
Response to Reply #9

13. My error, I meant eMailer ThunderBird.
apres moi, le deluge

Offline Lord Undies

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Re: Vermontese solar bust primitive gets e-mail blocked by George Bush
« Reply #1 on: May 25, 2008, 05:45:20 PM »
WAY TO GO, President Bush!!

Damn I'm gonna miss that man!