June 6th, 2012 is World IPv6 Day, where most major providers and web sites are going to turn off IPv4 in a test to see how well IPv6 is going to work… and there are no more IPv4 addresses, so it is hoped that it will go better than expected…
i passed the test, but don’t have my own IPv6 address, yet, because qwest (which is now known as centurylink) SUCKS!!!
spamcop is working, however…
when i send email from me at salamandir dot info to a friend of mine, whose email address i provide (spreznib at hybridelephant dot com) it bounces with the following message:
ERROR: Your message could not be delivered. The mail server generated the following error message: This message was created automatically by the mail system (ecelerity). A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed [email protected] (reading confirmation): 550 High probability of spam Arrival-Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2011 20:10:45 -0400 Reporting-MTA: dns; smtp.centurylink.net Action: failed Final-Recipient: rfc822; [email protected] Last-Attempt-Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2011 20:10:45 -0400 Remote-MTA: dns; mx1.thewebhostserver.com Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550 High probability of spam Status: 5.0.0
when i check mxtoolbox dot com, it tells me that 208.47.184.3 (the IP address for smtp.centurylink.net) is on a couple of blacklists, because SOMEBODY has been sending spam from smtp.centurylink.net without encountering the HAMMER…
however, when i call qwest/centurylink, they say that it’s not 100% sure that their server is on a blacklist, and i should investigate “other problems” because of the fact that they don’t show anything wrong, they can’t do anything…
this is the sound of me, repeatedly faceplanting on the desk… 😛
so i sent an email message this morning to a friend of mine, who has an @hybridelephant.com email address.
i sent a very similar message to him yesterday, which got through without a problem.
today, i got a “Mail Delivery Failure” notice, one minute after sending the message, with the following piece of insightful information:
This message was created automatically by the mail system (ecelerity).
A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:
>>> <REDACTED>@hybridelephant.com (reading confirmation): 550 High probability of spam
—— This is a copy of the headers of the original message. ——
X-BINDING:
X-Spam-Rating: None
X_CMAE_Category: 0,0 Undefined,Undefined
X-CNFS-Analysis: v=2.0 cv=Yv2NtvkX c=1 sm=0 a=BUl4cw8wsZUA:10 a=IkcTkHD0fZMA:10 a=QZ0zsqwyAAAA:8 a=9BvCZD0AAAAA:8 a=ivGNPCBhAAAA:8 a=2EfxiS_7of43nIBC7_sA:9 a=i3_x7-eabgX1RcdejPkA:7 a=QEXdDO2ut3YA:10 a=HCwVASBe7R0A:10 a=xM-QfRgW2ikA:10 a=h1z2HnThejPjI9jbmxDx3A==:117
X-CM-Score: 0
X-Scanned-by: Cloudmark Authority Engine
Authentication-Results: smtp03.embarq.synacor.com smtp.user=<REDACTED>; auth=pass (LOGIN)
Received: from [XX.XX.XXX.XXXX] ([XX.XX.XXX.XXX:35639] helo=ginko.localnet)
by smtp.centurylink.net (envelope-from <REDACTED>)
(ecelerity 2.2.3.47 r(39797/39798)) with ESMTPA
id A8/D2-28819-8B8C59E4; Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:04:57 -0400
To: <REDACTED>
Subject: physics is to math as…
From: <REDACTED>
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 10:04:55 -0700
X-Benediction: Tina Chopp is God! Praise Her or DIE!!
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: Text/Plain;
charset=”utf-8″
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Message-Id: <REDACTED>
my email-message-header-reading skills are a little rusty, but if i’m reading this correctly, smtp.centurylink.net (208.47.184.132) received the message from me (helo=ginko.localnet), smtp03.embarq.synacor.com (208.47.184.2) authorised me as an approved sender, and then rejected the message because it looked like spam, despite the fact that the Cloudmark Network Feedback System they use says that it isn’t.
so, i sent it again. same result, so i called tech support.
bad move… 😐
after calling them twice and spending more than an hour on the phone…
and having me resend the message again… 😛
(albert einstein said “a definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”)
and doing a bunch of other pointless, useless activities, such as shutting down and restarting both my client and my computer (with the predictable lack of results), the lady said she was escalating the issue and promised that i would get an email within the next 24 to 48 hours.
i didn’t even have to wait that long. i just got email from [email protected] which said:
I am sorry but the issue you are requesting assistance with is an unsupported issue. CenturyLink is responsible for making sure the modem is properly connected to the internet which it is. Also , for your email of <REDACTED> to be accessed at www.mycenturylink.com and so limited support on a few email software clients. We do not provide assistance with specific computer, hardware, software issue(s), port forwarding, advanced modem configuration, gaming devices/issues, the inability to access certain web sites, and so forth.
My recommendation is that you contact the original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) or the customer service department of the product for the type of assistance you are requesting. Please bookmark the following link: http://www.ctlhelp.com. At this site you will find the exact same level of support that you get when calling in or chatting with us but without the hold time. As an added bonus you will find assistance on several topics like the ones mentioned above that CenturyLink does not provide support for.
You can find an overview of our support boundaries…
… blah, blah, blah, fucking blah… 😐
so, what it comes down to is that THEIR email server is telling me that i’m sending spam, and that they don’t support whatever problem i’m having with their service. 😛
UPDATE: i got a comment from "steph at qwest", to which i am responding here. whether i actually got a response from a human being or not has yet to be determined, but either way, i feel like ranting again, so here goes.
i called them at 5:30 pm yesterday, because internet had not been working all day, and i had to go through the same automated bullshit again, which “detected a problem” and connected me to a live person, who asked me what lights were on my “modem” (which is actually a router, but i’ve given up trying to educate these clowns), and then told me to pull the power cord out of the back of the “modem”. when i told him that i couldn’t do that, but that i could turn it off with a power switch, he didn’t know what to do, and so i had to wait on hold while he went to find out. he returned and said that i should turn it off and leave it off until he came back, and i had to wait on hold again while he did some sort of mysterious thing. when he came back and told me to turn on the “modem” again, he was sort of surprised by the fact that it returned to having no “internet” or “DSL” lights lit, couldn’t give me a reason why it should not be working, and was about to put me on hold again when, suddenly, the connection lights lit up. i told him this and he wondered why it should have taken so long, but as long as it was working, that was good enough for him.
i am really frustrated with these people, because they read from scripts, complete with scripted “compliments” (which i can tell are scripted because they come at totally inopportune moments, and are identical, even down to the inflection and tone of voice, coming from at least three different “technicians”), don’t have any clue what they’re really doing, talk down to me, and say everything is all right, when it’s not exactly all right. i realise that networking is a complex business: i have worked in the electronic communications industry for 15 years, and i know that some things don’t have straightforward answers. to give me “pat” answers demeans my intelligence, and when they’re scripted to the point of inflection and tone of voice, it makes me feel as though they think they’re talking to an idiot… when, in reality, it’s very likely that i know more about how their network actually works than they do.
it turned out that they had fixed whatever had exploded, and internet had been “fixed” for two hours when i called them, but nobody had thought to call and tell me. also, almost as soon as i hung up the phone, my connection lights turned red, and then went out all together, and it was a half hour more before they would do anything more than light up green for about two minutes, and then go red and go out for 10 minutes or so… 😡
so, about 10:00 this morning, i was sitting there reading my email and there was this huge explosion outside, and shortly thereafter, all of my internet connectivity vanished. i called qwest and went through their automated disturbance detector, and it detected a problem (big surprise) and connected me to a human representative, who promptly hung up on me. so i had to call and go through the automated bullshit again before i could get connected to another human representative, who couldn’t get any response from my line. i told him that it was probably because there had been an explosion before i called, but he persisted in trying to run his “tests” anyway, and when that didn’t work, he called in his supervisor to run the tests, just to make sure. the representative i talked to didn’t sound like he was an “outsourced technician” (in other words, he didn’t have an identifiable ethnic accent), but his speech was strange, like he was reading from a script and didn’t actually know what he was doing. he said that they had alerted the technicians that would see what the problem was, but he had no idea when it would be fixed. it’s currently 4:30 and there’s still no internet. and this is from a company who claims that their internet connections are 99.99% reliable. 😐
i can still access wirelessly via our neighbour’s unsecured wireless router, which i suspect is a cable, rather than a DSL.