March has been a lousy month for spam. The total number of spam e-mails received at my domain is going to be greater than 70,000 for the month. My spam filter is extremely effective, but even at an error rate of about a quarter of a percent, that's about 200 spam mails that are leaking through the filter into my inbox. I might have to implement a second layer of filtering, such as Spam Assassin. It's trivial to do, and would probably stop all the spam completely.
Thursday, 30 March, 2006. 10:40:16 AM
Last night I pulled out all the electronics stuff I've been collecting for months. My ultimate goal is to build a computer of my own design based on a CDP1802 processor. I'm planning to design a bus which will allow me to change parts of the system, particularly the CPU so I can use Z80, 6502, and other processors later. First thing I did was to whip up a 555 timer circuit to act as a clock. The 1802 is a fully static CPU, so there's no lower limit to the clock speed I can use. The clock circuit I made has a frequency of about 1Hz, so it'll be easy to observe the operation of my circuit. I switched to my 28C16 EEPROM, which I'm going to load with a short 4 byte 1802 program to blink a light.
Wednesday, 29 March, 2006. 11:23:46 AM
John Scurlock at First Texas Honda is unavailable right now, so I'm looking up some things in connection with the e-mail I received. The IP address it came from is 208.178.167.102. That machine is running an SMTP server (Sendmail). The SMTP server answers "220 mail.mmserver.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.11.6/8.11.2; Wed, 29 Mar 2006 11:19:45 -0500". The domain "mmserver.com" has the following whois information:
Registrant:
John Max Miller
PO Box 218
Monterey, MA 01245
US
Domain Name: MMSERVER.COM
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
John Max Miller ceo@johnmiller.com
PO Box 218
Monterey, MA 01245
US
999 999 9999 fax: 999 999 9999
Record expires on 27-Oct-2011.
Record created on 27-Oct-2001.
Database last updated on 29-Mar-2006 11:22:53 EST.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS2.MAV-MAIL.COM 72.3.139.24
DNS.MAV-MAIL.COM 208.178.167.99
Now it appears that autorevenue.com, full name "@uto Revenue", is the agent that made the correlation between my falsified information provided to digitalcamera4free.com and my actual automobile ownership records. They claim to be using permission based e-mail, but clearly their database contains addresses which haven't been fully scrutinized.Product Description: @utoRevenue specializes in permission based e-mail and voice communication drastically reducing dealership monetary expenses while driving quantifiable revenue to the sale, service, parts and body shop. Full Name: John Max Miller, President 314 Main St Great Barrington, MA 01230-1744 USA Phone: (413) 528-8000 Fax: (413) 528-8141 Email: jmiller@autorevenue.com URL: http://www.autorevenue.com
I am curious about the identity of the machine at IP address 208.178.167.102. Who owns this machine, and what other machines are involved in this operation?
Wednesday, 29 March, 2006. 11:00:47 AM
A rather curious e-mail arrived in my inbox this morning:
From mmmailer@mail.mmserver.com Wed Mar 29 07:51:26 2006
Return-path: mmmailer@mail.mmserver.com
Envelope-to: digitalcamera4freecom@pdrap.org
Delivery-date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 07:51:26 -0600
Received: from linux01.mav-mail.com ([208.178.167.102] helo=mail.mmserver.com)
by oxygen.pdrap.org with esmtp (Exim 3.36 #1 (Debian))
id 1FOb54-00087I-00
for ; Wed, 29 Mar 2006 07:51:26 -0600
Received: (from mmmailer@localhost)
by mail.mmserver.com (8.11.6/8.11.2) id k2TDoIl11910;
Wed, 29 Mar 2006 08:50:18 -0500
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 08:50:18 -0500
To: digitalcamera4freecom@pdrap.org
Subject: First Texas Honda Welcomes You to the eVIP Program
MIME-Version: 1.0
From: johns@firsttexashonda.com
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="=_f6aa82795c44cf97f8136c91ace3a08a"
Message-ID:
X-SpamProbe: GOOD 0.0053065 ced45cb855744215c5dcaeb24ae27f35
Status: RO
Content-Length: 6042
Lines: 118
Content-Type: text/html; charset="ISO-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
[-- Autoview using /usr/bin/lynx -dump -force_html ''/tmp/mutt.html'' --]
[getLogo.php?name=0.gif&qnid=160421024]
Dear Patrick,
I just wanted to email you a quick note to say thank you for becoming
an eVIP customer at First Texas Honda for your Honda Del Sol.
We will be sending you periodic emails regarding your Del Sol. These
emails will consist of service reminders, important safety/recall
information, as well as special offers in our Service, Parts and Sales
Departments. We are confident that you will find our eVIP program to
be beneficial.
To show you our appreciation, we are offering our Free Vehicle
Inspection.* During this special you can receive the following:
21-Point vehicle inspection
Check fluid levels
Check battery for corrosion
Check shocks and struts
Check tires for visible damage and wear
Visually inspect the chassis
Now free of charge!
Don't delay! This offer expires April 26, 2006. For additional
information, or to schedule an appointment, please call us at
512-458-2511. To schedule an appointment online, [1]click here. For
your convenience, our Service Department hours are: Monday - Friday
7:00am to 6:00pm .
I look forward to seeing you soon.
Sincerely,
John Scurlock
Service Manager on behalf of all of us at First Texas Honda.
P.S. Don't forget to print this email and present it at time of
write-up.
*Coupon valid for eVIP customers only. Not valid on oil change. Offer
not valid on previous service. Cannot be combined with any other
offer. See Service Advisor for details.
If you want to visit our web site [2]click here.
First Texas Honda - 1301 W Koenig Lane - Austin, TX 78756 -
512-458-2511
______________________________________________________________________
This email is being sent to you, Patrick Draper because you either
purchased or service your Del Sol VIN# JHMEG2179TS000076 at First
Texas Honda. We send these emails to benefit you with savings, factory
recall information and timely servicing information. If for some
reason you would like to be taken off this email list for your Del Sol
please click [3]here and you will no longer receive these emails
regarding your Del Sol. Should you have any suggestions or comments
regarding our email program, please feel free to call us at
512-458-2511. Your feedback is important to us! Thank you!
I am a customer at First Texas Honda, but not with a Honda Del Sol. That was sold about a year and a half ago. What raised my interest is the e-mail address that this was sent to. digitalcamera4freecom@pdrap.org is an address that I used as a signup on the www.digitalcamera4free.com website, as a spam test. I wanted to see if entering an e-mail address on these types of websites would result in spam arriving to that address. Since then, thousands and thousands of spam messages have arrived in my inbox destined for that same address that I typed in. And now, a message from my Honda dealer has arrived.
The implications are threefold. First, my Honda dealer purchased an e-mail list from a company which they believed was reputable, but was in fact a nasty spam operation which presents illegally and illicitly gathered e-mail addresses as clean, opt-in adresses. Second, someone at First Texas Honda took the time to correlate names of people in their customer database with names of people in the spam list. Finally, and most significantly, I did not put my real address into the free digital camera website. I probably put something like 123 Main St. or a similar bogus address. That means that my regular address at First Texas Honda may have been reset without my permission, based on an entry in a spammer's mailing list.
I am going to call my dealer right now to see what their version of the story is.
Monday, 27 March, 2006. 04:41:11 PM
We're getting wood floors installed in the master bedroom so our office is packed full of stuff. I've been working at home every day this year, but since I can't sit at my desk I have to go to the office.
Saturday, 25 March, 2006. 01:56:05 PM
My new niece's name has changed. The new name is Allison Marlee Grosser.
Friday, 24 March, 2006. 05:40:23 PM
My sister in law called and said they found out they are having a boy. I was the last boy born in my family, way back in 1968.
Friday, 24 March, 2006. 05:38:04 PM
I have a new niece. Allison Elizabeth Grosser, born today at 2:28PM.
Thursday, 23 March, 2006. 09:45:15 PM
This tortoise was given as a gift to British General Robert Clive of the East India Company in 1774. It died this week in the Kolcata (Calcutta) Zoo of liver failure.
Thursday, 23 March, 2006. 10:53:42 AM
Last weekend I bought an Antec Sonata II computer case to replace a much older case. The Sonata II now houses my Celeron 1.1Ghz main Linux desktop machine and is very quiet.
Tuesday, 21 March, 2006. 01:22:20 PM
30.408739N, -97.770319W are my geographical coordinates of my desk according to Google.
Friday, 10 March, 2006. 01:17:52 PM
Whoa! Big News. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor blasted the Republicans on their anti-judiciary tactics, such as poisoning public opinion against the courts, cutting their budgets, and death threat intimidation. In a speech yesterday at GWU, she actually pointed out that this country is sliding towards dictatorship, and she used the word "dictatorship", not some other euphemism.
Wednesday, 08 March, 2006. 11:04:30 PM
More fun and games in Iraq. Twenty-nine bodies, all hung, found in the city this morning. These were Sunnis, killed by Shi'ites.
Wednesday, 08 March, 2006. 01:25:53 AM
The tank slated for Discovery's scheduled mission in May has a familiar problem. One of the 4 fuel cut off sensor switches in the bottom of the tank isn't working correctly. That's a problem that has plagued the program since the very beginning, and it still hasn't been fixed. Even the last mission was jeopardized by faulty sensors. The Space Shuttle should be retired now, and the Space Station should be abandoned too. They are both useless from a scientific standpoint, and the cost is causing shortages in other programs that have returned a lot of good science.