Tuesday 19 December 2006

Another Challenge/Response Datapoint

Sorry to harp on about challenge/response, but on the topic of C/R causing many false positives, I just noticed this post on The Admin Zone:

I HATE challenge-response spam blocking with a passion. All the time, I get Earthlink members signing up on my message board, but not putting the domain name in their whitelist. When vBulletin sends out a validation email, the following bounces back into my mailbox ... As a matter of principle, the mods and I NEVER respond to email challenges; we NEVER "click the link below" to be added to a whitelist.

If an existing user starts using challenge-response spamblocking, forget to put my domain in their whitelist, subscribe to threads, and as a result fill my mailbox with challenges, they're suspended for a week. Behind spam, it is my number two pet peeve.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had a similar problem with Earthlink recently where I was on the end of a chain letter stating that a new virus (Osama photos) was attacking computers and deleting hard-drives. Sure enough, 2 minutes of googling showed me it was both old and not quite accurate in its description (surprise surprise) and the latest round was therefore essentially SPAM.

The message originator swore that she'd seen it on Snopes and it was legitimate. Of course looking on Snopes showed it wasn't either. Jeesh!

So, being a but 'uppity' that morning I decided to write to her since she'd started a nice SPAM letter for everyone.

However, being on Earthlink I couldn't send to her and had to request to be added to her damn whitelist!

So.. she spams and then hides behind the stupid C/R system. I was a little upset! grrr

So I agree with Richi, these things are a PITA.

Chris H

Anonymous said...

Richi-C/R systems are a failure for businesses that depend on email for sales leads, marketing and customer interaction. I hope Earthlink rethinks this policy soon.

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